The essential portrait of America in the sixties, by the acclaimed author of The Year of Magical Thinking. More than a half century after its publication in 1968, Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains an essential portrait of America―and California in particular―during the sixties. This collection, which was Didion’s nonfiction debut, is a bold announcement of one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era and includes pieces exploring such subjects as John Wayne and Howard Hughes; growing up in California; the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room; and San Francisco’s Haight–Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture. The power of Didion’s essays only grows over time, owing to her stature as “an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time, a memorable voice, partly eulogistic, partly despairing; always in control” ( The New York Times Book Review ). “In her portraits of people, Didion is not out to expose but to understand, and she shows us actors and millionaires, doomed brides and naive acid-trippers, left wing ideologues and snobs of the Hawaiian aristocracy in a way that makes them neither villainous nor glamorous, but alive and botched and often mournfully beautiful . . . A rich display of some of the best prose written today in this country.” ― Dan Wakefield, The New York Times Book Review Joan Didion (1934-2021) was the National Book Award-winning author of many works of fiction and nonfiction. After earning a Bachelor’s degree in English at the University of California, Berkeley, she started her literary career writing articles and essays for Vogue , Mademoiselle , Life , The Saturday Evening Post , and National Review , establishing herself as a prominent member of the New Journalism movement. Her books include The White Album , Play It As It Lays , and Slouching Towards Bethlehem . Shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, Didion’s revelatory memoir The Year of Magical Thinking was adapted as a one-woman stage show starring Vanessa Redgrave on Broadway. She also wrote several screenplays with her husband John Gregory Dunne, including Panic in Needle Park with Al Pacino, the second remake of A Star is Born with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, and an adaptation of her own Play It As It Lays with Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins.