we tell ourselves stories in order to live collected nonfiction

They come at you, if not from ambush, then in gnomic haikus, ice pick laser beams, or waves. But her sentences could only be hers.' -Chicago Tribune 'I have been trying forever to figure out why sentences are better than mine or yours. Didion has captured the mood of America.' -New York Times 'Many of us have tried, and failed, to master gift for the single ordinary deflating word, the word that spins an otherwise flat sentence through five degrees of irony. Didion has remained a clearheaded and original writer all her long life.' -Newsweek 'Her intelligence is as honed as ever. a great American writer.' -New York Times Book Review 'One beautiful sentence follows another. ' one of the most recognizable-and brilliant-literary styles to emerge in America during the past four decades. And in Where I Was From Didion shows that California was never the land of the golden dream. 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. In After Henry Didion reports on the Reagans, Patty Hearst, and the Central Park jogger case. Miami exposes the secret role this largely Latin city played in the Cold War, from the Bay of Pigs through Watergate.

Salvador is a riveting look at the social and political landscape of civil war. 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.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem captures the counterculture of the sixties, its mood and lifestyle, as symbolized by California, Joan Baez, Haight-Ashbury.

Now the seven books of nonfiction that appeared between 19 have been brought together into one thrilling collection. Joan Didion's incomparable and distinctive essays and journalism are admired for their acute, incisive observations and their spare, elegant style. As featured in the Netflix documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold. From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I Mean, this collection includes seven books in one volume: the full texts of Slouching Towards Bethlehem The White Album Salvador Miami After Henry Political Fictions and Where I Was From.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live collected nonfiction