World Famous True Love Stories

Book 24 of my 2018 Reading Challenge

World Famous True Love Stories by Colin and Sally Wilson

Summary (via the book jacket)
The power of love can be wonderful, tragic, frightening, or inspiring. This fascinating book tells the stories of affairs, marriages, and passions that have all the sensation of epic fiction - yet were real stories that happened to real people.
The tales include Seretse and Ruth Khama, the royal couple whose defiance of race taboos helped pave the way for democracy in Botswana, the true story behind the legend of Paris and Helen of Troy, the marriage of Emperor Shah Jahan to his beloved Mumtaz and the glorious Taj Mahal memorial he built for her, and the turbulent life of Margaret Mitchell, whose multiple romances formed the inspiration for her bestselling novel Gone With the Wind. 

My Opinion
It's not a good sign when there's not much activity on Goodreads about a book - there isn't even a record with a book cover on it.  And why are the actors from the movie Gone With the Wind pictured on the cover of a book about true love stories anyway?  I made notes as I read each story both about the individual story and the book so that's the way the rest of the review will be broken up.

Paris and Helen of Troy: It read like a book report to me and I didn't see the love story.  There was also a multi-paragraph sidebar on Tristan and Iseult in the middle of this story for some reason and I didn't see the connection.

Alexander the Great: I don't know much about this time period but this story held my interest and I would like to learn more.

Antony and Cleopatra:  So far this seems to be regurgitated information I could've read elsewhere; did they do any research on their own?  And there was another sidebar in the middle of this story about King Arthur and Queen Guinevere - why?  I guess there wasn't enough info to warrant a full chapter but why put it in the middle of another story?  There's still more "book report" than "romance" feel but interesting to read.  

Abelard and Heloise: No name recognition for them at all which was especially interesting since the authors said their love letters to each other are among the "most famous love letters in the world".  The story gave me interest in reading about them further but doesn't really satisfy on its own.  

Taj Mahal: Definitely the most in-depth of the stories so far.  Interesting to me on a personal note timing-wise because I read this shortly after my husband took a business trip to India and visited the Taj Mahal himself.

The Amazing Jane Digby: Another unknown for me.  This story had the passion and romance I'd been expecting the whole time.

Richard and Isabel Burton: My favorite story in the book.  Turns out I didn't know them at all either (I was incorrectly thinking of the actor Richard Burton) but this story lived up to the book's title of "true romance".

Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning: I liked this one a lot too.  Maybe I'm enjoying the stories more as the book progresses because the time periods get more recent which allows for more emotion and detail than the book report facts and guesses of earlier.

Karen Blixen: except for the name recognition of "Out of Africa", I wasn't familiar with her at all.  More details definitely help the stories a lot and I like the last few stories more than the beginning ones.

Scarlett and Rhett: I had no idea about the turbulent life of Margaret Mitchell but overall I found this story to be meh.  I'm also indifferent on "Gone With the Wind" so that's probably a factor.

Black Marries White: The Romance of Seretse Khama:  I want to learn more.  That seems to be a theme for this book; either I wasn't interested or I was but need to read further on my own to learn more.