Shares the author's frank 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.

Joan Didion, the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I Mean, has always kept notebooks--of overheard dialogue, interviews, drafts of essays, copies of articles. Here are two extended excerpts from notebooks she kept in the 1970s; read together, they form a piercing view of the American political and cultural landscape. "Notes on the South" traces a road trip that she and her husband, John Gregory...

"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 essayist explores American ideals of independence and self-reliance by probing her own life and those of her relatives, discussing how the character of California's settlers created the state as it exists today.

Inez Christian is the wife of a man who wants to be the President of America. She, the daughter of an Hawaiian congressman, is also the lover of another, who inhabits that mirror world in which national, business and intelligence interests merge. The story moves from Inez's Hawaiian childhood to the smoke-filled rooms of city powerbrokers. --alibris.com

From one of our most iconic and influential writers: twelve pieces that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary figure. These essays from 1968 to 2000, which have not been gathered together until now, showcase Joan Didion's incisive reporting, her empathetic gaze, and her insights on writing. They touch on subjects ranging from newspapers ("the problem is not so much whether one trusts the news as whether one finds it"),...