Joan Didion

In this memoir, the author shares her observations about her daughter as well as her own thoughts and fears about having children and growing old, in a personal account that discusses her daughter's wedding and her feelings of failure as a parent. It opens on July 26, 2010, as Didion thinks back to Quintana's wedding in New York seven years before. Today would be her wedding anniversary. This fact triggers vivid snapshots of Quintana's childhood,...

"From the universally acclaimed, best-selling author of the National Book Award-winning The Year of Magical Thinking: ten pieces never before collected that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary writer. Here are six pieces written in 1968 from the "Points West" Saturday Evening Post column Joan Didion shared from 1964 to 1969 with her husband, John Gregory Dunne about: American newspapers; a session with Gamblers Anonymous;...

The "dazzling" and essential portrayal of 1960s America from the author of South and West and The Year of Magical Thinking (The New York Times). Capturing the tumultuous landscape of the United States, and in particular California, during a pivotal era of social change, the first work of nonfiction from one of American literature's most distinctive prose stylists is a modern classic. In twenty razor-sharp essays that redefined the art of journalism,...

Slouching Towards Bethlehem: America in the 1960s-a pivotal era of social change and generational divide. Here is Joan Didion on the "misplaced children" of Haight-Ashbury as well as John Wayne in Hollywood; folk singer Joan Baez and reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes; the extremes of both Death Valley and Las Vegas. Named to Time magazine's list of the one hundred best and most influential nonfiction books, this is "a rare display of some of the...

"Joan Didion has always kept notebooks of overheard dialogue, observations, interviews, drafts of essays, and copies of articles. 'Notes on the South' traces a road trip she took with her husband John Gregory Dunne, in June 1970, through Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Her acute observations about the small towns they pass through, her interviews with prominent local figures, and their preoccupation with race, class, and heritage seem to suggest...

Rock star John Norman Howard has noticed that his career has begun to decline. Too many years of concerts, bad managers and life on the road have made him cynical. Then he meets the innocent, pure and very talented singer Esther Hoffman. John shows Esther the way to stardom while forsaking his own career. As they fall in love, her success only makes his decline even more apparent.