Joan Didion

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Tennessee

An autobiographical portrait of marriage and motherhood by the acclaimed author details her struggle to come to terms with life and death, illness, sanity, personal upheaval, and grief.

The Year of Magical Thinking

9f8f0fb1-1967-469e-bc69-80552be67c79-1

David Thomson

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Pennsylvania

A Novel

A ruthless dissection of American life in the late 1960s, Play It as It Lays captures the mood of an entire generation, the ennui of contemporary society reflected in spare prose that blisters and haunts the reader. Set in a place beyond good and evil-literally in Hollywood, Las Vegas, and the barren wastes of the Mojave Desert, but figuratively in the landscape of an arid soul-it remains more than three decades after its original publication a profoundly disturbing novel, riveting in its exploration of a woman and a society in crisis and stunning in the still-startling intensity of its prose.

Play It As It Lays

c9e30d45-5170-405e-8d61-a9f915309c0b-1

Fair condition. 
The first several pages are dog eared on the bootom right ans there is writing with blue ink in the book. Please see the pictures. 

From a smoke free home. 

I am happy to bundle shipping & give deal pricing for multiple book purchases. 
Please feel free to message me!

New York

This classic collection of journalism defined the state of America during the upheaval of the sixties revolution. The essays feature barricades and bombings, mass murders and kidnapped heiresses.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

57f4e924-5a68-44a5-861a-74d1a9fd0815-1

Essays

Like-new copy with a little light edge wear, as pictured. Super clean, never read.

🌟 BONUS: Use my code STAR at checkout for $5 off your first Pango purchase of $10 or more!🌟

Vermont

First published in 1979, The White Album records indelibly the upheavals and aftermaths of the 1960s. Examining key events, figures, and trends of the era—including Charles Manson, the Black Panthers, and the shopping mall—through the lens of her own spiritual confusion, Joan Didion helped to define mass culture as we now understand it. Written with a commanding sureness of tone and linguistic precision, The White Album is a central text of American reportage and a classic of American autobiography.

The White Album

526a0446-45f5-4ea9-8f90-183ced7556cc-1

Hardcover copy in very good condition.  Smoke-free, pet friendly home. 

Rhode Island

From one of our most powerful writers, a work of stunning frankness about losing a daughter. Richly textured with bits of her own childhood and married life with her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and daughter, Quintana Roo, this new book by Joan Didion examines her thoughts, fears, and doubts regarding having children, illness, and growing old.
 
Blue Nights opens on July 26, 2010, as Didion thinks back to Quintana's wedding in New York seven years before. Today would be her wedding anniversary. This fact triggers vivid snapshots of Quintana's childhood--in Malibu, in Brentwood, at school in Holmby Hills. Reflecting on her daughter but also on her role as a parent, Didion asks the candid questions any parent might about how she feels she failed either because cues were not taken or perhaps displaced. "How could I have missed what was clearly there to be seen?" Finally, perhaps we all remain unknown to each other. Seamlessly woven in are incidents Didion sees as underscoring her own age, something she finds hard to acknowledge, much less accept.
 
Blue Nights--the long, light evening hours that signal the summer solstice, "the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but also its warning"--like The Year of Magical Thinking before it, is an iconic book of incisive and electric honesty, haunting and profoundly moving.

Blue Nights

6bba030f-1a0a-40fd-8e2c-526a50799001-1

Shares the author's 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.

Nathaniel Rich

Noticeable shelfwear on cover and edges of cover. Slight yellowing on edges of interior pages. Otherwise great condition. 

Washington

From a Notebook

Through excerpts from her notebooks, Joan Didion recounts a monthlong road trip through the Gulf states during the 1970s.

South and West

af9358ad-1658-4fb8-a18b-1524da697279-1

Two excerpts from never-before-seen notebooks offer insights into the author's literary mind and process and includes notes on her Sacramento upbringing, her life in the Gulf states, her views on prominent locals and her experiences during a formative "Rolling Stone" assignment.

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Arizona

Inez Victor knows that the major casualty of the political life is memory. But the people around Inez have made careers out of losing track. Her senator husband wants to forget the failure of his last bid for the presidency. Her husband's handler would like the press to forget that Inez's father is a murderer. And, in 1975, the year in which much of this bitterly funny novel is set, America is doing its best to lose track of its one-time client, the lethally hemorrhaging republic of South Vietnam. As conceived by Joan Didion, these personages and events constitute the terminal fallout of democracy, a fallout that also includes fact-finding junkets, senatorial groupies, the international arms market, and the Orwellian newspeak of the political class. Moving deftly from Honolulu to Jakarta, between romance, farce, and tragedy, Democracy is a tour de force from a writer who can dissect an entire society with a single phrase.

Democracy

8a5089e9-527c-4ee0-bc88-685e6c3104bd-1

This tale of love and murder revolves around Inez Christian Victor, the wife of a man who wants to be President of the United States.

Connecticut

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * "Didion at her finest" --USA Today * An intricate, fast-paced novel about trying to create a context for democracy and getting hands a little dirty in the process, complete with conspiracies, arms dealing, and assassinations. From the author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I Mean

The narrator introduces Elena McMahon, estranged from a life of celebrity fundraisers and from her powerful West Coast husband, Wynn Janklow, whom she has left, taking Catherine, her daughter, to become a reporter for The Washington Post. She finds herself boarding a plane for Florida to see her father. She becomes embroiled in her his business even though "she had trained herself since childhood not to have any interest in what he was doing." It is from this moment that she is caught up in something much larger than she could have imagined.

Didion makes connections among Dallas, Iran-Contra, and Castro, and points out how "spectral companies with high-concept names tended to interlock." As this book builds to its terrifying finish, we see the underpinnings of a dark historical underbelly.

The Last Thing He Wanted

19b94438-eac8-46a6-ac22-f2c6348f8492-1

During a trip to Florida, Elena McMahon, a Washington Post reporter estranged from her powerful West Coast husband, finds herself caught up in her father's mysterious dealings, global intrigues involving high-level diplomats, arms trafficking, conspiracie

Massachusetts

Miami is not just a portrait of a city, but a masterly study of immigration and exile, passion, hypocrisy, and political violence, from the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I Mean.

It is where Fidel Castro raised money to overthrow Batista and where two generations of Castro's enemies have raised armies to overthrow him, so far without success. It is where the bitter opera of Cuban exile intersects with the cynicism of U.S. foreign policy. It is a city whose skyrocketing murder rate is fueled by the cocaine trade, racial discontent, and an undeclared war on the island ninety miles to the south.

As Didion follows Miami's drift into a Third World capital, she also locates its position in the secret history of the Cold War, from the Bay of Pigs to the Reagan doctrine and from the Kennedy assassination to the Watergate break-in.

Miami

dcefe553-fefb-4485-87e9-2a24bd3a4cd3-1

With her usual sharp eye for the realities of American life, Joan Didion explores an American city of glitter and glamour, a city of racial tension and fast money whose culture, history, and state of mind are inextricably linked with Cuba, only 90 miles away. An Editor's Choice selection of the New York Times and Time. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

New Jersey

Twelve early pieces never before collected offer an illuminating glimpse intothe mind and process of the bestselling author.

Let Me Tell You What I Mean

4e18b376-62f5-439e-8f13-bb0f2cb78ca0-1

California

From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking: In this "arresting amalgam of memoir and historical timeline" (The Baltimore Sun), Didion--a native Californian--reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history, and ours.

Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to California's ethic of ruthless self-sufficiency in order to examine that ethic's often tenuous relationship to reality. Combining history and reportage, memoir and literary criticism, Where I Was From explores California's romances with land and water; its unacknowledged debts to railroads, aerospace, and big government; the disjunction between its code of individualism and its fetish for prisons.

Whether she is writing about her pioneer ancestors or privileged sexual predators, robber barons or writers (not excluding herself), Didion is an unparalleled observer, and this book is at once intellectually provocative and deeply personal.

Where I Was From

b2705f05-2829-4673-83a6-208c60d519ad-1

The great American essayist reassesses her life and work, exploring American ideals of independence and self-reliance by probing her own life and those of her relatives. 50,000 first printing.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * From one of our most iconic and influential writers, the award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking: a timeless collection that reveals what would become Joan Didion's subjects, including the press, politics, California robber barons, women, and her own self-doubt. "Didion's remarkable, five decades-long career as a journalist, essayist, novelist, and screen writer has earned her a prominent place in the American literary canon, and the twelve early pieces collected here underscore her singularity."--O Magazine These pieces from 1968 to 2000, never before gathered together, offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary figure. They showcase Joan Didion's incisive reporting, her empathetic gaze, and her role as "an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time" (The New York Times Book Review). Here, Didion touches on topics ranging from newspapers ("the problem is not so much whether one trusts the news as to whether one finds it"), to the fantasy of San Simeon, to not getting into Stanford. In "Why I Write," Didion ponders the act of writing: "I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means." From her admiration for Hemingway's sentences to her acknowledgment that Martha Stewart's story is one "that has historically encouraged women in this country, even as it has threatened men," these essays are acutely and brilliantly observed. Each piece is classic Didion: incisive, bemused, and stunningly prescient.

The iconic writer's electrifying first novel is a story of marriage, murder and betrayal that only she could tell with such nuance, sympathy, and suspense—from the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I Mean. Everett McClellan and his wife, Lily, are the great-grandchildren of pioneers, and what happens to them is a tragic epilogue to the pioneer experience—a haunting portrait of a marriage whose wrong turns and betrayals are at once absolutely idiosyncratic and a razor-sharp commentary on the history of California.

Run River

d4a50908-3631-4070-940e-96f77bd51447-1

The iconic writer's electrifying first novel is a story of marriage, murder and betrayal that only she could tell with such nuance, sympathy, and suspense--from the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I Mean.

Everett McClellan and his wife, Lily, are the great-grandchildren of pioneers, and what happens to them is a tragic epilogue to the pioneer experience--a haunting portrait of a marriage whose wrong turns and betrayals are at once absolutely idiosyncratic and a razor-sharp commentary on the history of California.

John Leonard

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Florida

Collected Nonfiction; Introduction by John Leonard

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.

As featured in the Netflix documentary Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold.

Joan 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.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem captures the counterculture of the sixties, its mood and lifestyle, as symbolized by California, Joan Baez, Haight-Ashbury. 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. Salvador is a riveting look at the social and political landscape of civil war. Miami exposes the secret role this largely Latin city played in the Cold War, from the Bay of Pigs through Watergate. In After Henry Didion reports on the Reagans, Patty Hearst, and the Central Park jogger case. 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. And in Where I Was From Didion shows that California was never the land of the golden dream.

We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live

ca428d9b-b250-4b38-9918-c6a5a9d9244f-1

"Terror is the given of the place." The place is El Salvador in 1982, at the ghastly height of its civil war. Didion "brings the country to life" (The New York Times), delivering an anatomy of a particular brand of political terror--its mechanisms, rationales, and intimate relation to United States foreign policy.

As ash travels from battlefields to body dumps, Didion interviews a puppet president, and considers the distinctly Salvadoran grammar of the verb "to disappear." Here, the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I Mean gives us a book that is germane to any country in which bloodshed has become a standard tool of politics. 

Salvador

c688e2b2-572c-48a2-b8da-70b174156830-1

A shimmering novel of innocence and evil: the gripping story of two American women in a failing Central American nation, from the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I Mean

"[Didion's] most ambitious project in fiction, and her most successful ... glows with a golden aura of well-wrought classical tragedy."  --Los Angeles Times Book Review

Grace Strasser-Mendana controls much of Boca Grande's wealth and knows virtually all of its secrets; Charlotte Douglas knows far too little. "Immaculate of history, innocent of politics," Charlotte has come to Boca Grande vaguely and vainly hoping to be reunited with her fugitive daughter. As imagined by Didion, her fate is at once utterly particular and fearfully emblematic of an age of conscienceless authority and unfathomable violence.

A Book of Common Prayer is written with the telegraphic swiftness and microscopic sensitivity that have made Didion one of our most distinguished journalists.

A Book of Common Prayer

848640e1-6372-4dc8-8917-6a9ccaa7c12d-1

Alaska

An incisive compilation of political essays, originally written for The New York Review of Books from 1988 to 2000, explores the nature of American politics and political figures and the role of the media in transforming the American political landscape. Reprint. 35,000 first printing.

Political Fictions

3c4fd79f-8079-4fdb-97c3-5a581ecd756f-1

Presents essays that discern the social and political importance behind the day's most lurid news

After Henry

Vintage Readers are a perfect introduction to some of the greatest modern writers presented in attractive, accessible paperback editions. “Didion has the instincts of an exceptional reporter and the focus of a historian . . . a novelist’s appreciation of the surreal.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review Whether she’s writing about civil war in Central America, political scurrility in Washington, or the tightl -braided myths and realities of her native California, Joan Didion expresses an unblinking vision of the truth. Vintage Didion includes three chapters from Miami; an excerpt from Salvador; and three separate essays from After Henry that cover topics from Ronald Reagan to the Central Park jogger case. Also included is “Clinton Agonistes” from Political Fictions, and “Fixed Opinions, or the Hinge of History,” a scathing analysis of the ongoing war on terror.

Vintage Didion

d9957bc2-eb37-4780-88d9-91048b02cbe6-0

Salvador / Democracy / Miami / after Henry / the Last Thing He Wanted

Library of America continues its definitive edition of one of the most electric writers of our time with a volume gathering her iconic reporting and novels from mid-career This second volume in Library of America's definitive Didion edition includes two novels and three remarkable essay collections with which she extended the compass of the extraordinary journalistic eye first developed in the celebrated books Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album. Gather here are Salvador, a searing look at terror and Cold War politics in the Central American civil war of the early 1980s; Miami, a portrait not just of a city but of immigration, exile, the cocaine trade, and political violence; and After Henry, in which she reports on Patty Hearst, Nancy Reagan, the case of the Central Park Five, and the Los Angeles she once called home. The novels Democracy and The Last Thing He Wanted, the latter recently adapted for film by Netflix, are fast-paced, deftly observed narratives of power, conspiracy, and corruption in American political life. Taken together, these five books mark the remarkable mid-career evolution of one of the most dynamic writers of our time.

Joan Didion: the 1980s And 90s (LOA #341)

Elizabeth Hardwick

Women and Literature

A major writer's reckoning with the realtions between men and women, women and writing, writing and life

Seduction and Betrayal

Frank Rich

America Since 9. 11

Discusses the rhetoric and media strategies of George W. Bush following the September 11th terrorist attacks.

Fixed Ideas

Robert Mapplethorpe

Eyes on China is the ideal textbook for students entering the third year of a four-year course of Chinese language study and those who are ready to move from an intermediate to advanced level. Bridging the gap between informal spoken Chinese and more formal written Chinese, this textbook presents an on-the-ground perspective of what a visitor to China today might see and experience. Unlike other advanced-level textbooks, which typically feature essays, articles, and reviews from Chinese newspapers and magazines, the selections included here have all been written by the authors expressly for this book. They cover a range of timely China-related topics, including the problem of air pollution, corruption, infrastructure development, the development of high-speed rail, the prevalence of knock-off products in the marketplace, new tech trends, the contemporary art scene, and the relationship between mainland China and Taiwan. Each chapter's featured text is accompanied by grammar structure explanations, a vocabulary list, and other useful tools. · An ideal textbook for students progressing to advanced-level Chinese language study · Brand-new materials present a comprehensive understanding of China today · Features original selections enhanced by grammar explanations, vocabulary lists, and other tools

Some Women

Novelist and essayist Joan Didion writes about the refusal of Americans to openly discuss and debate the Bush administration's new unilateralism toward both domestic and international policies since 9/11. This provocative and persuasive essay was originally published in The New York Review of Books, and garnered a tremendous response from the magazine's readers. In a preface commissioned for this book edition, Frank Rich, the popular op-ed columnist for The New York Times, echoes her argument with his own passionate analysis. Fixed Ideas is an incisive, timely political commentary from an American virtuoso.

Browse by categories

Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion

Play It As It Lays

Joan Didion

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Joan Didion

The White Album

Joan Didion

Blue Nights

Joan Didion

South and West

Joan Didion

Democracy

Joan Didion

The Last Thing He Wanted

Joan Didion

Miami

Joan Didion

Let Me Tell You What I Mean

Joan Didion

Where I Was From

Joan Didion

Let Me Tell You What I Mean

Joan Didion

Run River

Joan Didion

We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live

Joan Didion

Salvador

Joan Didion

A Book of Common Prayer

Joan Didion

Political Fictions

Joan Didion

After Henry

Joan Didion

Vintage Didion

Joan Didion

Joan Didion: the 1980s And 90s (LOA #341)

Elizabeth Hardwick

Seduction and Betrayal

Joan Didion

Fixed Ideas

Robert Mapplethorpe

Some Women

Joan Didion

Fixed Ideas