An extraordinary report on the aftermath of the 1960's in America by the New York Times-bestselling author of South and West and Slouching Towards Bethlehem. In this landmark essay collection, Joan Didion brilliantly interweaves her own "bad dreams" with those of a nation confronting the dark underside of 1960's counterculture. From a jailhouse visit to Black Panther Party cofounder Huey Newton to witnessing First Lady of California Nancy Reagan pretend to pick flowers for the benefit of news cameras, Didion captures the paranoia and absurdity of the era with her signature blend of irony and insight. She takes readers to the "giddily splendid" Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the cool mountains of Bogotá, and the Jordanian Desert, where Bishop James Pike went to walk in Jesus's footsteps-and died not far from his rented Ford Cortina. She anatomizes the culture of shopping malls-"toy garden cities in which no one lives but everyone consumes"-and exposes the contradictions and compromises of the women's movement. In the iconic title essay, she documents her uneasy state of mind during the years leading up to and following the Manson murders-a terrifying crime that, in her memory, surprised no one.