As opposed, for example, to Leo Strauss in his The City and Man. And by the end (of a short book) I was tired of her somewhat affected style and her grasping for something to write about, rather than writing because she really had something of value to say that really merited being communicated to others. In a couple places it bordered on approaching its reputation.

This book is okay, some pieces more than that, some less, but I certainly didn’t encounter the shimmering revelation it’s reputed to be. It is the definitive account of a terrifying and transformative decade in American history whose discordant reverberations continue to sound a half-century later. She paints indelible portraits of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes and folk singer Joan Baez, 'a personality before she was entirely a person,' and takes readers on eye-opening journeys to Death Valley, Hawaii, and Las Vegas, 'the most extreme and allegorical of American settlements.' First published in 1968, Slouching Towards Bethlehem has been heralded by the New York Times Book Review as 'a rare display of some of the best prose written today in this country' and named to Time magazine's list of the one hundred best and most influential nonfiction books. In twenty razor-sharp essays that redefined the art of journalism, National Book Award-winning author Joan Didion reports on a society gripped by a deep generational divide, from the 'misplaced children' dropping acid in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district to Hollywood legend John Wayne filming his first picture after a bout with cancer. Capturing the tumultuous landscape of the United States, and in particular California, during a pivotal era of social change, the first work of nonfiction from one of American literature's most distinctive prose stylists is a modern classic. The 'dazzling' and essential portrayal of 1960s America from the author of South and West and The Year of Magical Thinking (The New York Times).

Slouching towards bethlehem author joan