Joan Didion’s incomparable and distinctive essays and
journalism are admired for their acute, incisive
observations and their spare, elegant style. Now the seven
books of nonfiction that appeared between 1968 and 2003 have
been brought together into one thrilling collection.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem captures the counterculture of
the sixties, its mood and lifestyle, as symbolized by
California, Joan Baez, Haight-Ashbury. The White Album
covers the revolutionary politics and the “contemporary
wasteland” of the late sixties and early seventies, in
pieces on the Manson family, the Black Panthers, and
Hollywood. Salvador is a riveting look at the social and
political landscape of civil war. Miami exposes the secret
role this largely Latin city played in the Cold War, from
the Bay of Pigs through Watergate. In After Henry Didion
reports on the Reagans, Patty Hearst, and the Central Park
jogger case. The eight essays in Political Fictions–on
censorship in the media, Gingrich, Clinton, Starr, and
“compassionate conservatism,” among others–show us how we
got to the political scene of today. And in Where I Was From
Didion shows that California was never the land of the
golden dream.