We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction (Everyman's Library)

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)brbrJoan 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.brbriSlouching Towards Bethlehem /icaptures the counterculture of the sixties, its mood and lifestyle, as symbolized by California, Joan Baez, Haight-Ashbury. iThe White Album /icovers 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. iSalvador/i is a riveting look at the social and political landscape of civil war. iMiami/i exposes the secret role this largely Latin city played in the Cold War, from the Bay of Pigs through Watergate. In iAfter Henry /iDidion reports on the Reagans, Patty Hearst, and the Central Park jogger case. The eight essays in iPolitical Fictions/i–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 iWhere I Was From /iDidion shows that California was never the land of the golden dream.