Incisive essays on Patty Hearst and Reagan, the Central Park jogger and the Santa Ana winds, from the New York Times –bestselling author of South and West . In these eleven essays covering the national scene from Washington, DC; California; and New York, the acclaimed author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album “capture[s] the mood of America” and confirms her reputation as one of our sharpest and most trustworthy cultural observers ( The New York Times ). Whether dissecting the 1988 presidential campaign, exploring the commercialization of a Hollywood murder, or reporting on the “sideshows” of foreign wars, Joan Didion proves that she is one of the premier essayists of the twentieth century, “an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time” (Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review ) . Highlights include “In the Realm of the Fisher King,” a portrait of the White House under the stewardship of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, two “actors on location;” and “Girl of the Golden West,” a meditation on the Patty Hearst case that draws an unexpected and insightful parallel between the kidnapped heiress and the emigrants who settled California. “Sentimental Journeys” is a deeply felt study of New York media coverage of the brutal rape of a white investment banker in Central Park, a notorious crime that exposed the city’s racial and class fault lines. Dedicated to Henry Robbins, Didion’s friend and editor from 1966 until his death in 1979, After Henry is an indispensable collection of “superior reporting and criticism” from a writer on whom we have relied for more than fifty years “to get the story straight” ( Los Angeles Times ). ""We tell ourselves stories in order to live" was the opening line of Joan Didion's celebrated The White Album. In After Henry, her new collection of pieces, most of them reported and written for The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker, she examines, precisely and suggestively, the stories people tell themselves - about murders and earthquakes and wildfires, about presidential politics and Patricia Hearst and Central Park "wilding," about boom years passing and hard times coming down - in Washington and in California and in New York." "Joan Didion's two previous collections, Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album, are now established as classics. Salvador and Miami stand as hallmarks of political reporting. After Henry is a major literary event."--BOOK JACKET.
