by Joan Didion
First published 2008
In Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion scrutinizes the counterculture's rise and the nation's social upheaval. From hippies seeking transcendence in Haight-Ashbury to a young mother drowning her children, Didion's incisive vignettes reveal an America unmoored from its traditional moorings. Her precise, crystalline prose dissects the decade's anxiety, alienation, and lost innocence, casting an unsentimental eye on the era's turmoil. As Didion's journalistic lens peels back the veneer of the American dream, her elegant, piercing essays lay bare the decade's disillusionment.
Genres: essays, american-fiction, 20th-century, american, contemporary, biography-memoir
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: journalistic-lens, social-commentary
Setting: California, San Francisco, United States
Period: 20th century
256 pages · Paperback · Farrar, Straus and Giroux