Rating: 
Summary: Don't put this one off for tomorrow
Review: I read this book two years ago during the summer I was fourteen. It was definitely one of the best books I ever read, and I don't think I would be me today without the influence of Gone With the Wind. Margaret Mitchell is a witch with a pen; her thrilling story of Scarlett, Rhett, Melanie, Ashley, and Tara is as compelling as it is frightening. You love every character and hate them at the same time while next to them you feel their pain, their longing, their heartache, their confusion, their human wickedness, and their love. Two warnings: I made the mistake of reading the ending of the book before I got to it. I didn't understand the ending but thought I did, so it ruined not only the completion but also my enjoyment of a matchless masterpiece. Do not, under any circumstances, read the ending. Secondly, if you have not seen the movie, don't watch it. If you have, don't be fooled. I read the book long before I saw the movie and felt like a part of GWTW. The movie is supposed to be one of the best ever made, but I was disappointed with it. The characters seemed compromised somehow, and the glory of my imagination was warped. GWTW is a daunting book, but I have not met a person on earth who does not call it a mountain above most. Read the book and love it!
Rating:
Summary: Gone With The Wind
Review: Gone With The Wind gives whoever reads it a very good story but it also teaches you a lot about the Civil War. The story starts at the beginning of the Civil War and it follows the life of Scarlett O'Hara for around 12 years. She is 16 at the beginning of the book.
For about ten years of her life she thinks she loves Ashley Wilkes, only to realize that she had never loved Ashely and had tricked herself into thinking she did. At the beginning she tries to get Ashley to marry her instead of his fiance, when he doesn't, she marries Charles Hamilton.
Throughout the story she and everyone around her loses everything that was dear to them. Almost everyone lost immediate family members in the war and Scarlett's mother , Ellen died from a fever and her father died after being crazy following Ellen's death. Scarlett struggled for a long time trying to keep her plantation, Tara, together. Scarlett and her family nearly starve for a long time until a man named Will helped them with the farming.
Then, Scarlett married her sister's fiance for his money. He died a short while after. The night after his death, Rhett Butler, a man that the town hates because he was a scalawag, asked Scarlett to marry him. After a while she said yes. Within a few years, Scarlett gives birth to a baby girl and Rhett Butler loves her more than anything else. Scarlett loves her, but she never shows it, so Rhett raised Bonnie one his own. Everything is fine until it takes a turn for the worse. Bonnie dies and Melanie Wilkes, Ashley's wife dies. It was then that Scarlett realized how much she loved Melanie and it was then that she finally got her life straightened out.
Overall, I think that Gone With The Wind is and excellent book. I would recommend it to highschool students.
Rating:
Summary: Unbeatable
Review: I agree with the woman from the UK. This is ridiculous. Slavery was horrible but guess what ? It happened, so I guess what we should conclude from what you are saying is that we should just forget about Hitler and the concentration camps and pretend like it never happened. The world can be a horrible place so while we're here why don't we face the facts and try to learn from history. Besides, history repeats itself. So, back to the book. WOW! This is the best book I've ever read. Reading this book you realize how horrible slavery was but also what hell Southerner's went through during this period. After all nearly one-fourth of the population of the U.S. was wiped out because of the Civil war and it tells about the people who really changed the South, the carpetbaggers! I saw the movie and after having read the book I can't believe some of the powerful scenes they left out. Like when the Union soldiers were going through Tara and almost took Charles' sword. Or when the Calvert girl came to tell everyone she was going to marry. It just goes on and on. Did you know that MM wrote GWTW for her own pleasure and never thought of herself as a good writer. One day a publisher friend from NY dropped by and saw hundreds of sheets of papers in dissaray and asked if he could look at them. MM had refused to let anybody read what she had been writing but said yes to this guy for some reason then felt self-consious almost immediatley after he left and asked for them back the next day. He said he would never give them back and published them.
Rating:
Summary: The best book ever
Review: A fourteen year old who loves to read almost anything under the sun: I loved this book. When I was in seventh grade I checked it out of our little school library because it had a lot of points--we'd read books, take a test, and receive a certain number of points for that book. If we got everything correct, we got full points, and we needed many points to pass English every trimester.
I didn't realize I was going to fall in love with the characters. Each person is beautifully made, intricate, and unique. You grow to know everyone in the story. Margaret Mitchell doesn't let any detail slide. She describes Scarlett beautifully.
Scarlett is perhaps the most interesting character I've ever read. I hate her completely, and yet love her just the same. She was the most spoiled brat, and yet I felt like I was part of her, or she was part of me.
Also, Margaret Mitchell does a good job of justifying the Confederate's reasons for breaking off from the United States. Although I don't agree with slavery at all, I could see where the southerners came off, believing as they did, and even felt a little angry at the northerners for being so hotheaded themselves.
For those of you who have seen the movie and liked it, buy this book, its ten times better. And for those of you who disliked the movie, still get the book. It is very much different from the movie, you get in the whole world, and they left out so much in the movie. For instance, Scarlett ... well, just read it, it's good.
Rating:
Summary: Read it in context
Review: Hey, 'Reader from Santa Fe'. Yes there are passages which are cringeworthy. And do you know what? Thank God it's never been banned! For MM to have written it any other way would be a fib. No, I'm not talking about the glorification of slavery and their 'barracks.' I am with you and Toni Morrison 100% on the reality of this outrageous part of history. But for MM to have written it any other way would hardly ring true. Anyone who knows about her life knows that she was writing from the perspective that she did because that was her experience. She lived in a world of white supremacy and segregation, and do you know what? I read this and think thank goodness we don't now! Thak goodness I can have the friends that I want to and date the guys I want to, regardless of their background. GWTW is as much a historical document, albeit laced with southern pride, inasmuch as it shows what past attitudes were. I see GWTW as a great story nonetheless, with strong characters clashing with each other and riding roughshod over others in the name of self-survival. Not always attractive qualities, but qualities that have themselves survived. May I recommend The Wind Done Gone by Alice Randall? She writes that MM and GWTW inspired her to think. They inspired me too.
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Summary: And the winner is.....
Review: This book sold 4 Million copies in one week! Then it was made into a movie which stayed in theaters for 30 years. No story ever told can compete with this one. It is just as compelling now as it was all those years ago and will remain so indefinitely.
Rating: 
Summary: One star for a brilliant, literary masterpiece of racism.
Review: I have just re-read GWTW for the fourth time and each time
I do I start out thinking it a magnificently written and researched book, with a glorious story - and the patronizing racist attitude of the author - yes, the author herself - makes me sick to my stomach. I devoured this novel when I was thirteen, again in my twenties, then my thirties, and here I am again, keen to know what will happen next to that sociopath Scarlett O'Hara the ultimate sexy, manly man, Rhett Butler and the dreamy dreamer and weakling, Ashley Wilkes. And yet - I believe this book should be banned. There are almost no books I feel that way about. I'm a writer and I abhor censorship. But this book is so outright racist it gags.
Why should such stereotypes be allowed to continue for generation after generation to absorb? What would the world think of a romantic novel about dashing German SS officers and a beautiful blonde "maidchen" cavorting charmingly before concentration camp slaves? All the while talking about those slaves as if they were simply "children" who didn't know any better than to be wearing striped pajamas, carrying out humiliating tasks for their "masters" and existing pleasantly and contentedly in their cute little "barracks"? Critics would be up in arms. Such a novel would fall into disrepute and no one would claim it to be a great work of literature, even if it was well-written. So why do we stand for GWTW - this travesty of lies, lies, lies? I notice that one of the reviewers below mentioned that slaves weren't, in fact, badly treated. Hello! To begin with, slavery is slavery: an abomination upon the Earth. Any person who is enslaved is being treated badly. Period. Second, that reviewer should read Toni Morrison's "Beloved"
to find out what it was REALLY like to live as a slave on a southern plantation. That depiction rings true. GWTW, on the subject of slavery, is complete clap-trap. Over and over again, it is mentioned that Scarlett's mother, "Miss Ellen," would be "turning over in her grave" to see how
Scarlett betrayed her southern belle roots. Well, I contend that Margaret Mitchell is turning over in her grave because she knows what a monstrous mistake she made with GWTW. Hopefully, she's evolved, and, knowing her feminist views and her basic fairness as a person, I think she would agree with me - BAN THIS BOOK!
Rating:
Summary: This book should most def. be read by everyone
Review: There is no excuse not to read this book. It is amazing and would be loved by all who read it.
Rating:
Summary: There was a novel before the film, really
Review: The Story: Scarlett O'Hara is the daughter of a rich plantation owner in Georgia and, to her, the world revolves around balls, garden parties, and convincing Ashley Wilkes, the rich neighbor's son, that she is the wife for him. Then, the Civil War intrudes, and Scarlett must find a way to survive numerous obstacles. Along the way, she becomes a deeper, better person (with a view side-trips into manipulation and deviousness and mischief). Commentary: This is a very big story, set in an important part of American history, and involving good character development, a plot with many twists, and a writing style that is clear, concise, and descriptive. The characters are written as colorfully as they are portrayed in the film, while retaining realism, and the same is true for the settings.
Rating:
Summary: This good book
Review: Very good book. I like long books. Buy this book today or else they might sell them all and then you won't be able to buy book for yourself.
Best book ever.
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