Curator and writer Hilton Als assembles a mosaic around Joan Didion — not a biography, but something closer to a feeling. Arranged chronologically, the book traces Didion's lifelong negotiation between California and New York, the two coasts that shaped her voice and sharpened her eye. As a Westerner who left and returned, she wrote about her native land with the particular clarity of someone who had earned some distance from it. From New York, she turned that same unflinching gaze on politics — Clinton, El Salvador, the Central Park Five.

More than 50 artists are gathered here in response, ranging from Helen Lundeberg and Diane Arbus to Betye Saar, Vija Celmins, and Andy Warhol — works across painting, photography, sculpture, ephemera, video, and film. Three previously uncollected Didion texts are included as well, among them a 1975 commencement address at UC Riverside and a 2007 essay on stage magic and hope. Published with the Hammer Museum.