A landmark essay that helped define the New Journalism of the 1960s, “Slouching Toward Bethlehem” vividly documents the acid-tripping counterculture of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury. Zola Books is offering this essay free to DailyLit readers to celebrate the release of Joan Didion’s legendary book of the same name Slouching Towards Bethlehem for the first time in digital format.
Joan Didion is responsible for some of the greatest non-fiction writing of the last 50 years. Her first collection of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem , was immediately hailed as a masterpiece, and each book since has become a part of the cultural conversation. 2005’s A Year of Magical Thinking , documenting her grief over the sudden death of her husband, won the National Book Award for non-fiction. In 2007, Didion received the National Book Foundation's annual Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters for “her distinctive blend of spare, elegant prose and fierce intelligence.”