Where I Was From

In her moving and insightful new book, Joan Didion reassesses parts of her life, her work, her history and ours. A native Californian, Didion applies her scalpel-like intelligence to the state'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 Fromexplores 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 her book is at once intellectually provocative and deeply personal.

Joan Didion was born in California and lives in New York. She is the author of five novels and six previous books of nonfiction: <b>Political Fictions</b><i>, </i><b>After Henry</b><i>, </i><b>Miami</b><i>, </i><b>Salvador</b><i>, </i><b>The White Album</b><i>, </i>and <b>Slouching Towards Bethlehem</b><i>.</i>