The World and Everything in It: June 29, 2026

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Well, we’re down to the final two days of WORLD’s June Giving Drive.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Two generous WORLD families have put up a combined $110,000 as a Close Strong Challenge to help us finish the month with momentum!

EICHER: If you value sound journalism, grounded in facts and Biblical truth, I hope you’ll join them if you haven’t given already. If you have—and many have!—thank you so much.

REICHARD: We work in journalism, so we understand deadlines. If you’ve been waiting until the end, we get it. Well, the end is just about here. Today and tomorrow are the last two days.

WNG.org/donate.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Major Supreme Court rulings, including an asylum case that turned on the meaning of two crucial words:

SHAPIRO: A running back does not “arrive in” the end zone by reaching the one yard line, and a letter does not “arrive in” your mailbox if a mailman is waylaid by a dog on the way.

NICK EICHER, HOST: That’s ahead on Legal Docket.

Also today, a patriotic Monday Moneybeat: David Bahnsen on free markets and American freedom.

And later, the WORLD History Book.

CONROY: The book caused an explosion at book stores.

Frankly my dear, we have the story behind America’s best-selling novel.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, June 29th. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. 

I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Now news—here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Iran / Strait of Hormuz » Cracks in the foundation of a fragile U.S. truce with Iran continue to widen.

Iran fired a fresh barrage of drones and missiles at U.S. allies in the Gulf on Sunday — and again claims it alone controls the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard says it hit a U.S. airbase in Kuwait and the Navy's Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. In Qatar, shrapnel killed a civilian. The strikes answered a second day of U.S. bombing inside Iran.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz said Sunday:

WALTZ:  The, the president's patience isn't going to last forever. They need to understand their leverage is diminishing by the day. Uh, the Gulf Arabs are creating all kinds of alternatives, uh, to the Straits of Hormuz

Peace talks are still ongoing, but Tehran is threatening to quit them.

Republican Senator John Kennedy says Tehran is in no position now to be beating its chest:

KENNEDY: Iran right now is like a really old man who can't afford to catch a cold. We have degraded them deeply. That's why we went in. They've got three wheels down and their axle dragging.

President Trump accused Iran of breaking the deal and warned the U.S. could be "forced to militarily complete the job.”

With hostilities reignited, Senator Bill Cassidy is one of a handful of Republicans joining Democrats in demanding that Congress get a bigger say in what happens next:

CASSIDY: Congress wants to be read in, and Congress has our rules and procedures that our Founding Fathers set up, and they set it up precisely so that there would not be too powerful of an institution of a presidency.

Democrats continue to blast President Trump over the war, accusing him of creating a crisis … while the White House says it is preventing one — namely, a nuclear-armed Iran.

Venezuela death toll » Five days after Venezuela’s twin earthquakes, hope is fading fast. The death toll has climbed past 1,400, with thousands hurt and tens of thousands reported missing.

The coastal state of La Guaira was gutted — more than a thousand buildings collapsed. Crews from two dozen countries are still clawing through the rubble still finding some survivors, but rescuers say time is running out.

AUDIO: [Speaking Spanish]

One woman, speaking from a hospital near Caracas, said “it was awful — so many people died,” so many relatives went missing. She lost her home, but adds that her family is okay, thank God.

The U.S. has sent teams and a Navy ship to airlift survivors.

Sen. Paul presses Fauci probe » Republican Sen. Rand Paul continues to press for answers from Dr. Anthony Fauci, formerly the nation’s top infectious disease doctor — about his actions before and during the pandemic.

Paul chairs the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. He said that unlike the prior administration, Trump officials have cooperated in handing over evidence about the origins of COVID-19.

PAUL: They’ve turned over virtually everything, and what we now know beyond a reasonable doubt is that Anthony Fauci did indeed fund gain-of-function research

Gain of function research involves modifying a virus in a lab, potentially making it more dangerous, in order to study it.

Some lawmakers believe such research may have played a role in shaping COVID. And many experts believe that virus escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China ... though there is no universal consensus.

 PAUL: We have the evidence that the experiments were gaining in function. The viruses were becoming more lethal, more attachable to human cells, and more infectious. We do know that this was going on, that was funded by the NIH, specifically under the tutelage of Anthony Fauci

Fauci has denied funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan.

Sen. Paul has subpoenaed him to testify on the matter next month.

Heat wave » A brutal heat dome is baking much of the country — and forecasters say the worst is still ahead.

More than 130 million Americans are already under heat alerts. Add the humidity, and it’ll feel like 105 to 115 in spots. The heat could shatter records in some cities.

Bryan Putnam with the National Weather Service:

PUTNAM: It’s really starting to ramp up across the south and into the plains, but it’s gonna spread across the Midwest into the Ohio Valley and all the way to the East Coast over the next couple of days.

And he warns it’ll likely drag into the July Fourth weekend — as cities host World Cup matches and the nation’s 250th-birthday celebrations.

Out West, the same heat is fueling wildfires — three firefighters were killed near the Colorado-Utah border over the weekend.

A stifling heat wave is also scorching much of Europe.

Box office » At the box office, Supergirl’s opening weekend was less than super.

CLIP (Supergirl trailer): Here’s the thing, my cousin and I have very different ideas about what it means to be a hero.

Supergirl opened in second place with an estimated $38 million dollars domestically. That was a disappointing haul for the big budget DC Comics flick, which drew plenty of fire from critics over its screenplay, among other things.

Toy Story 5 finished atop the box office once again, taking in another $70 million stateside. It’s sitting at nearly $600 globally in its second week.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: A look at multiple major Supreme Court decisions on Legal Docket.  And later, David Bahnsen will join us for the Monday Moneybeat.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 29th day of June, 2026. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning! I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST:  And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Legal Docket.

Today, four Supreme Court opinions touching immigration, gun rights, and product liability. But beneath those three runs the same question: Who gets to make the rules?

In three of the cases, the Court said judges need to stay in their lane. In the fourth, it reminded government that constitutional rights still set the outer limits.

EICHER: First, Mullin v Al Otro Lado, a 6-3 decision that says the executive branch has the authority to block migrants trying to claim asylum near the border.

The question came down to the ordinary meaning of two words in immigration law: “arrives in.”

This case centers on a policy called “metering.” It’s no longer in place, but when it was, it put a limit on the number of migrants that could be processed at ports of entry each day.

REICHARD: Al Otro Lado is the advocacy group behind the lawsuit. Its co-founder, Nicole Ramos, didn’t hold back in her criticism of the conservative majority:

RAMOS: So the decision today to deny access to the legal process established by Congress over 40 years ago to many black and brown refugees comes as no surprise, especially when we look at the politics of white nationalism and replacement theory that we’re seeing coming out of some of our elected officials.

Some legal scholars considered those accusations slanderous, legally so. They said the case is a matter of strict statutory interpretation.

Hans von Spakovsky is with Americans Advancing Freedom:

SPAKOVSKY: You notice she doesn’t actually talk about the language, the clear text of the law. The six justices weren’t making a policy decision ... .All they were looking at was the question of does the executive branch have the authority to do this under the very specific statute. …So these…racist claims…that’s just a way of her trying to get around the plain language of the statute.

EICHER: Ilya Shapiro is director of Constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute. He says the court relied on everyday analogies to explain what the phrase “arrives in” really means:

SHAPIRO: There are some colorful examples that Justice Alito raised in his majority opinion. You know, a running back does not arrive in the end zone by reaching the one yard line. …A letter does not arrive in your mailbox if the mailman is waylaid by a dog on the way, things like that. So basically the interpretation was someone who is prevented from entering the United States, from literally crossing the border has not “arrived there,” and therefore that right to claim asylum is not triggered.

Shapiro also noted the Obama administration used a similar policy. Although metering is no longer in effect, the Court has now clarified what the statute means should a future administration revive it:

SHAPIRO: You have to be inside the border to claim asylum.

REICHARD: The next opinion is also an immigration matter, Mullin v Doe, another 6-3 decision favoring the executive branch. Again, the Court said judges have only the authority Congress provides.

This was a challenge to President Trump ending so-called T-P-S for two groups. It’ll affect about 350,000 Haitians and a relative handful of Syrians, around 6,000, who’ve enjoyed temporary protected status for years.

EICHER: Congress created TPS to protect foreign nationals already in the U.S .when natural disaster or war strikes their home countries.

The dispute was whether federal courts may review and block the administration’s decision to terminate TPS … based on claims that the process was flawed or else motivated by racial discrimination.

REICHARD: The majority ruled that the Immigration and Nationality Act broadly bars courts from reviewing those kinds of decisions.

During oral argument, Justice Sonia Sotomayor cited examples of President Trump’s incendiary language to try to demonstrate that he was motivated by racial animus.

SOTOMAYOR: Now we have a President who says at one point that Haiti is a “filthy, dirty, and disgusting s-hole country…” I’m quoting him.

EICHER: But Ilya Shapiro says the majority focused elsewhere:

SHAPIRO: It’s been 15 years since the Haiti earthquake… Hassan Bashar Assad has been overthrown. There’s a different government, which we recognize. We have diplomatic relations with the new Syrian government, so whatever is going on in those countries, which may not be perfect, but the emergency that warranted the TPS, the temporary protected status, is over.

The decision establishes that, under the statute, temporary means temporary. That leaves a future policy fight over immigration right where it belongs:

SHAPIRO: If you don’t like the law, seek redress in Congress, not in the courts…

REICHARD: Next, the Court turned from immigration to the Second Amendment—and the limits that government may place on carrying firearms in public. 

Here in Wolford v. Lopez, the Supreme Court considered whether Hawaii could presume that firearms are forbidden on private property open to the public—unless the owner gives express permission.

EICHER: Lawyer Amy Swearer (also with Advancing American Freedom) explains:

SWEARER: So it’s a law that flips the presumption about private property. So, you think about things that are open to the public, gas stations, retail businesses, barber shops, restaurants, all of those places historically had a right to exclude whoever they wanted, including armed customers, they could put up the "no gun" signs and guns wouldn’t be allowed. Well, Hawaii flipped that, and they said you are not allowed to carry anywhere any of these private businesses or properties that are generally open to the public unless you expressly get permission first.

By flipping the presumption, Hawaii made carrying a firearm practically impossible unless you’re already a law breaker and don’t follow laws anyway.

Swearer details the absurdity for the law-abiding:

SWEARER: Now think about how insane that it, because in order to get permission, you actually have to go onto the property and see if there’s a sign that says guns allowed or ask someone for permission. And so essentially what this did was eviscerate the right to bear arms in public.

REICHARD: Hawaii defended the restriction by pointing to local custom, something called “the spirit of Aloha.” Again, Swearer:

SWEARER: Where he references the “spirit of aloha”, and it says essentially the Second Amendment applies equally throughout the United States. It doesn’t give way to the spirit of Aloha, any more than it does to the Windy City or the Big Apple. And this is important; in some earlier cases, the Supreme Court of Hawaii had quite literally stated, well, okay, the Second Amendment exists, but we’re going to interpret it according to the spirit of Aloha, which in this case means we don’t like guns. The spirit of Aloha is not compatible with lawful civilian gun ownership. And so it was a bit of a pretty hefty and sassy smackdown from Justice Alito looking at the Hawaii Supreme Court in that regard…

Justice Kagan wrote a separate dissent from Sotomayor and Jackson. I asked about that:

SWEARER: Justice Jackson’s dissent that Justice Sotomayor joined, then start with a very specific argument which was that, “well, this wasn’t a Second Amendment case at all,” and so that is the part that I think Justice Kagan really wanted to distance herself from…. And I think that’s a good thing for her to distance herself from….it’s a bit of a stretch to suggest that a law that explicitly regulates the ability of a person to bear arms in public is somehow just a private property law that has no reference at all to the Second Amendment.

Swearer told me, though, that law-abiding gun owners in the state still face a long list of places where carry is restricted, so future litigation is practically certain.

EICHER: Finally, a case far removed from immigration or gun rights—but one with enormous consequences for business and federal regulation. Monsanto v Durnell is a win for the agricultural biotech company Monsanto and its weed-killer Roundup. This affects thousands of ongoing claims against the company over Roundup. A man who developed cancer argued the product should have carried an additional warning label. 

Von Spakovsky explains the ruling:

SPAKOVSKY: …federal law preempts state laws. The feds have said they are going to regulate pesticides. They are the ones who say what has to be on the label, and you can’t get around that by using state tort laws to try to go after the manufacturer, particularly because this guy’s complaint was that, well, they didn’t put a warning on the label that Roundup causes cancer. The federal government didn’t allow them to put this label on it.

REICHARD: Shapiro says this is the biggest business case of the term:

SHAPIRO: Monsanto…has been fighting litigation over allegedly its products causing cancer in various ways. And the thing is… nobody is making the claim that Monsanto is violating federal law in any way. They’re complying with EPA regulations, they’re complying with labeling rules, everything that is demanded of them federally.

This was 7-2, and the two in dissent aren’t who you might expect:

SHAPIRO: Interestingly, the two dissenters were Gorsuch and Jackson, sort of on opposite ends of the court. An interesting argument about whether there was any leeway for additional labeling, or whether the federal law ….left any wiggle room for additional labeling. But nonetheless Monsanto has won, and so it’s, you know, over a decade long litigation has concluded.

The ruling weakens thousands of pending Roundup lawsuits, at least those built on failure-to-warn claims. But settlements that’ve already been paid? Those stay in place.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group, and he is here now. Good morning, David.

DAVID BAHNSEN: Well, good morning, Nick. Good to be with you.

EICHER: Well, David, really enjoyable Dividend Cafe this week. Thank you for doing it. It’s not about the stock market. It’s about what markets mean. When we say each week we’ll talk about business, markets, and the economy, we are not talking about the stock market per se. We’re talking about free markets, all of the markets where transactions happen, where buyers and sellers come together.

You argue in that Dividend Cafe, David, that in a culture increasingly defined by cynicism and grievance, markets may actually be one of the last institutions built on hope. What do you mean by that?

BAHNSEN: Well, it’s a comment on incentive structures, for one thing. There are a lot of venues and institutions and domains in modern society where the incentives lend themselves to negativity, sensationalism, and pessimism.

The inherent nature of markets, which is where human relationships of exchange take place, where risk is taken to produce goods and services for the future, where there are the basic processes of human endeavor—what we’re talking about is a market. What we’re talking about is something that requires a vision for the future.

There is an intrinsic hope or optimism about the future. My argument is very much that, increasingly, markets are one of the few places that you can find a hopeful optimism.

EICHER: Yeah, and we even see in popular culture almost the opposite picture. You think of the famous line from Wall Street, “Greed is good.” Even if you didn’t see the movie, you know the quote: “Greed is good.”

Why do you think, David, business—and particularly capital markets—have come to be viewed with so much moral suspicion?

BAHNSEN: That movie was made in 1987, and since then bankers and anything that is adjacent to this idea of Wall Street is portrayed as greedy and hedonistic.

But what has not stayed is that portrayal at Wall Street. It’s legal, it’s pharma, it’s business, it’s corporate America. There has to be one eyebrow up because the profit motive has to be viewed in the context of something sinister, of taking something from someone, of viewing customers as people to exploit instead of serve.

It is a very cynical idea, but it’s also totally fallacious. It’s a massive misunderstanding of human nature.

I guess, Nick, the world is going to do that, and Hollywood’s going to do that. But Christians need to do better. Christians need to see markets, business, entrepreneurialism, relationships of exchange as opportunities to serve and to have a positive view of the future.

Now, by the way, some of these endeavors will fail, right? There will be products and services made that don’t really take, that aren’t successful. There will be competitors that beat us and things like that.

But when we talk about investment, whether it’s capital investment or time and energy, which many people listening know all too well from their own labor, from their own small business, family business—when you talk about the heart and soul that you pour into it, this is done because you have a positive view of the future.

In a time where there is so much negativity, I find this embedded positivity of markets to be something we should be celebrating.

EICHER: Well, David, one section of the Dividend Cafe this week that caught my attention was your comparison of markets with politics and media.

Of course, media is a place where I spend a little bit of my time, and you argue that political and media incentives—they reward outrage and pessimism. I don’t think that’s true at WORLD. We work for it not to be true at WORLD. But in general, I think there is a truth to that where a lot of media are concerned, and it’s certainly something we have to fight.

While business incentives reward building something better, is that really the dividing line, David? The different incentive structures?

BAHNSEN: Incentive structures exacerbate it. It is ultimately worldview.

When you say that you think it’s different at WORLD, I wholeheartedly agree with you. But I agree with that because I think WORLD is operating from a fundamentally different foundation.

When you have a foundation not rooted in the true, beautiful, and good, then those various incentives are really going to be exacerbated.

There’s no question right now that the incentives in politics are to sell something negative, to sell something that is falling apart, to portray a vision that is so bad that only this new politician can come in and do something.

Media—I think the better way to put it—is that sensationalism is an embedded part of the incentive structure. Sensationalism can be positive or negative, but right now consumer appetite and social media are for a negative sensationalism.

EICHER: Well, David, you gave us a great gift a month or so ago when you talked with us about the ten things you wish all journalists knew about economics.

I think one of the things that makes economics more accessible—and certainly makes journalism more interesting—is your pushback against the reduction of economics to charts and formulas and numbers.

Not that those things aren’t important. You’ve got to have them in order to make macroeconomic measurements, and those things are important, of course. But the human side of economics.

Put that in plain English. What gets lost when we think of capitalism only in terms of GDP and earnings reports and stock indices?

BAHNSEN: This is one of the most important points I’ve made in some time, in my opinion.

I used, in a speech I gave last week at the Acton Institute, an analogy to The Screwtape Letters: that if you were trying to convince people away from markets, if you were trying to dehumanize markets, if you were trying to avoid the distinctly Christian and creational message of markets that I talk to WORLD about, that I have dedicated my life to, that we spend time every Monday morning talking about, that I believe in so passionately—if you were trying to portray a different message, what could you do better than to talk about numbers and theorems and ratios and charts all the time? To take out human experience. To take out the humanity of it. The aspirational nature. The way that the Bible talks about markets and business endeavor.

There’s numbers, okay? There are things being measured. At the end of the day, in a macroeconomic sense, there is data that tells us employment and wages and labor and, yes, GDP.

But when we reduce it to that, not only are we truncating it, but we are allowing the narrative to be missed.

Econometrics does not capture human action. The biblical understanding of economics that is most animating and most faithful must always center around the human endeavor.

EICHER: Well, David, here we are headed into Independence Day weekend and America’s 250th birthday.

Abraham Lincoln once called America the last best hope on earth, and you borrow that phrase for the markets.

What should Americans be celebrating about markets?

BAHNSEN: Well, look, the actual day and the actual weekend and the annual festivity—I think the fireworks and the picnics and the barbecues and all of those things are very, very appropriate. It’s a festive and celebratory time of year.

But when you ask how we should reflect on it—which I don’t think should be reserved for one day per year—and particularly when we think about these 250 years, I really do believe that people have to understand the uniqueness of American independence goes far beyond a tax protest and a successful military revolution.

Embedded in the founding was something deeply philosophical and deeply unique in world history.

It is impossible to fully capture the story of the American experiment without understanding the synthesis of religious liberty and economic liberty. These things, harmonized, are the essence of the American experiment.

So many of us of faith have long resisted any attempt to secularize America. That does go against the American founding and what we celebrate in our independence.

But, Nick, so does going against free enterprise.

There was a unique pioneering spirit that celebrated life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and then a group of people that wanted to go build a better life. This is the American dream.

The notion that we can protect what we’re celebrating on the Fourth of July without a real focus on economics and economic liberty and economic opportunity is silly.

EICHER: All right, David Bahnsen, founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. He writes at DividendCafe.com and at WORLD Opinions.

David, thank you. Enjoy the holiday-shortened week, and we’ll see you next time.

BAHNSEN: Thanks, Nick. Same to you. Happy Independence Day.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next: The WORLD History Book.

Over the span of ten years—beginning a hundred years ago—author Margaret Mitchell started a novel she never expected to finish. It became America’s best selling novel of all time.

WORLD’s George Grant has the story.

GEORGE GRANT: One hundred years ago, while laid up at home with a sprained ankle, Margaret Mitchell began writing a sprawling epic about the Civil War on a Remington Portable typewriter, a gift from her husband.

In a PBS documentary, biographer Darden Pyron says she worked in secret.

DARDEN PYRON: When somebody would drop in, one of her friends would drop in, she’d throw a tea towel over a typewriter so that people couldn’t see what she was doing.

Mitchell was a sixth generation Southerner whose grandfathers had both fought in the war. So she grew up with stories of the valor and the tragedy of that titanic conflict. She had been writing stories as long as she could remember, inspired by the historical tales of G.A. Henty and Edward Stratemeyer. Later she honed her narrative skills as a reporter for the Atlanta Journal.

Pyron says this new book was a passion project.

PYRON: She clearly had the great plot outline in her mind before she started writing. It was like she had a kind of vision.

She worked on it off and on for the next three years. But leaving the manuscript unfinished, eventually using its bulk to prop up a wobbly sofa, she had no thought of publishing it. Fate, however, would intervene. In April 1935, Harold Latham, a New York editor for Macmillan, visited Atlanta scouting for new talent. A staffer for the Atlanta Sunday Magazine suggested he contact Mitchell, so he invited her to lunch. He asked if she had ever written a book.

John Wiley is an author and historian.

WILEY: At first she said she didn’t even have a book, didn’t want to talk to him. Finally, he kept on and she admitted, well, she was working on something but it wasn’t ready to be seen.

Then, Mitchell had a change of heart. She gathered up the tattered and disheveled pages and delivered them to Latham saying, “Take these before I change my mind.”

WILEY: When Harold Latham took the manuscript, he said he had to buy an extra suitcase, it was so large.

On the train to New Orleans the next day he began to read the work and was immediately captivated. After he agreed to publish the book, Mitchell worked for another six months checking the historical references and rewriting the opening chapter several times. Gone with the Wind was published on June 30, 1936. And the rest is history.

Pat Conroy is an author whose own novels were influenced by Mitchell.

PAT CONROY: The entire country went crazy. The book caused an explosion at book stores and they could not keep them in book stores. It was on the way to becoming the most successful novel ever published in America.

The novel was a runaway sensation, topping best seller lists for the next several years and winning the Pulitzer Prize. It was adapted into the 1939 Hollywood blockbuster starring Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Haviland, Hattie McDaniel, and Leslie Howard. It won the Oscar for Best Picture that year, and it continues to be heralded as one of the greatest films of all time.

SCARLETT O’HARA: Fiddledeedee! War, war, war! This war talk is spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream!

The story begins in 1861, on the eve of the first wave of Southern secessions from the Union. It ends twelve years later in the bitter waning days of Reconstruction. The plot follows a host of vividly drawn characters and their tangled romances, shattered expectations, and battlefield horrors.

RHETT BUTLER: Has the war started?

O’HARA: Sir, you should have made your presence known.

BUTLER: In the middle of that beautiful love scene? That wouldn’t have been very tactful, would it? But don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.

O’HARA: Sir, you are no gentleman!

BUTLER: And you, miss, are no lady!

Graft and greed stand side by side with virtue and valor, hypocrisy and scandal alongside integrity and honor, faithfulness and resolution alongside infidelity and iniquity—just like life. Written on an epic scale akin to the sagas of Dickens, Scott, and Dostoyevsky, it is, like them, very much a book of its time and place—likely to rankle our modern moral sensibilities about history and class and race. Even so, there is no denying that the writing is sometimes soaring, sometimes sparkling, sometimes sublime. The plot moves along without lagging across more than a thousand pages. The descriptions are indelibly picturesque. The characters are unforgettable.

Mitchell asserted, “I had every detail clear in my mind before I sat down to the typewriter.” She actually wrote the heart-wrenching climactic scene first:

O’HARA: Rhett! Rhett! Rhett! Rhett, if you go, where shall I go? What shall I do?

BUTLER: Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

Amidst deep despair there was yet a glimmer of hope.

O’HARA: After all … tomorrow is another day.

There is a reason Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind has sold more than thirty million copies. The book is a genuine classic.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m George Grant.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Tomorrow: a pastor finds support after pushing back on his city over so-called Pride month activities. And, author Eric Metaxas on the American Revolution. That and more tomorrow.

I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio.

WORLD’s mission is biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Bible says, “As it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him’—these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.” (ESV) 1 Corinthians 2:9–11

Go now in grace and peace.

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