Slouching Towards Bethlehem

By Joan Didion

Categories: Biographies & Memoirs

Joan Didion's first nonfiction collection, published in 1968, gathers twenty essays on California and American life in the 1960s, many of them first written for magazines. The title essay reports from San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, where young people drifted through the counterculture. Other pieces profile John Wayne and visit the Newport mansions, and Didion turns to herself in essays on keeping a notebook and on self-respect.

Recommended by 3 people

• Liz Lambert
• Kara Swisher
• Shane Parrish: “I’d never heard of Joan Didion until recently. Yes, to preempt you, that does mean I’ve been under some sort of literature rock for years. Anyways, this, a collection of essays, is her first non-fiction work. What really roped me in was her essay On Keeping a Notebook”