Joan Didion (1934-2021) was one of Americäs most iconic writers and intellectuals. Her reportage and essays, as well as her novels and memoirs provide sharp comments on a variety of facets of American culture and politics between the 1960s and the 2010s. Employing the complex relationship between life and words as guiding framework, the volume offers fresh approaches to Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Play It As It Lays, The White Album, Democracy and Where I Was From, as well as takes on her final publications The Year of Magical Thinking, Blue Nights and Let Me Tell You What I Mean. The collection also features photographs of Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, with an accompanying essay by artist and photographer Nancy Ellison, plus a contribution by literary biographer Tracy Daugherty.