Joan Didion bibliography

This is a list of works by and on American author Joan Didion.

Run, River (1963) ISBN 0679752501
Play It as It Lays (1970) ISBN 0374529949
A Book of Common Prayer (1977) ISBN 0671224913
Democracy (1984) ISBN 0679754857
The Last Thing He Wanted (1996) ISBN 0679433317

Nonfiction

Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) ISBN 0374266360
The White Album (1979) ISBN 0374532079
Salvador (1983) ISBN 0671470248
Miami (1987) ISBN 0671646648
After Henry (1992) ISBN 0671727311
Political Fictions (2001) ISBN 0375413383
Where I Was From (2003) ISBN 0679433325
Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11 (2003; essay first published in the January 16, 2003 issue of The New York Review of Books under the title "Fixed Opinions, or The Hinge of History") ISBN 1590170733
The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) ISBN 1400078431
Blue Nights (2011) ISBN 978-0307267672
South and West: From a Notebook (2017) ISBN 978-1524732790
Let Me Tell You What I Mean (2021) ISBN 978-0593312193
Notes to John (2025) ISBN 978-0593803677

Anthologies

Vintage Didion (2004; includes excerpts from previous nonfiction works) ISBN 1400033934
Live and Learn (2005; includes Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album and After Henry) ISBN 0007204388
We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction (2006; includes Didion's first seven volumes of nonfiction) ISBN 0307264874
I Write to Find Out What I Am Thinking: Collected Nonfiction (2025; includes the last four books published in Didion's lifetime) ISBN 978-0593992210

Library of America collection

Joan Didion: The 1960s & 70s (2019; edited by David L. Ulin) ISBN 978-1598536454
Joan Didion: The 1980s & 90s (2021; edited by David L. Ulin) ISBN 978-1598536836
Joan Didion: Memoirs & Later Writings (2024; edited by David L. Ulin) ISBN 978-1598537871

Uncollected essays and articles

Below are essays and articles by Didion that have not been published in book form to date.

"Berkeley's Giant: The University of California". Mademoiselle. January 1960.
"Et tu, Mrs. Miniver" (PDF). National Review. January 2, 1960.
"Marriage a la Mode" (PDF). National Review. August 13, 1960.
"San Francisco Job Hunt". Mademoiselle: 128–29. September 1960.
"Washington, D.C.: Anything Can Happen Here". Mademoiselle. November 1960.
"Jealousy: Is It a Curable Illness?". Vogue. June 1961.
"Take No for an Answer". Vogue. October 1, 1961.
"When it was Magic Time in Jersey". Vogue. September 15, 1962.
"Emotional Blackmail: An Affair of Every Heart". Vogue. November 15, 1962.
"American Summer". Vogue. May 1963.
"I'll Take Romance" (PDF). National Review. September 24, 1963.
"Silver to Have and to Hurl". Vogue. April 1, 1964.
"Bosses Make Lousy Lovers". The Saturday Evening Post. January 31, 1965.
"New Museum in Mexico". Vogue. August 1, 1965.
"Questions About the New Fiction" (PDF). National Review. November 30, 1965.
"The Big Rock Candy Figgy Pudding Pitfall". The Saturday Evening Post. 3 December 1966.
"On Becoming a Cop Hater". The Saturday Evening Post. August 24, 1968.
"On the Last Frontier with VX and GB". Life. February 20, 1970.
"Where Tonight Show Guests Go to Rest". Esquire. October 1976.
"Falconer". The New York Times. March 6, 1977. (Review of Falconer by John Cheever)
"Getting the Vegas Willies". Esquire. May 1977.
"Meditation on a Life". The New York Times. April 29, 1979. (Review of Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick)
"Letter from 'Manhattan'". The New York Review of Books. August 16, 1979. ISSN 0028-7504.
"'I want to go ahead and do it'". The New York Times. October 7, 1979. (Review of The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer)
"Without Regret or Hope". The New York Review of Books. June 12, 1980. ISSN 0028-7504.
"Discovery". The New York Review of Books. October 1, 1984. ISSN 0028-7504.
"When Trees Grew on Money". The New York Times. December 1, 1991. (Review of The Golden Age of American Gardens by Mac Griswold and Eleanor Weller)
"Varieties of Madness". The New York Review of Books. April 23, 1998. ISSN 0028-7504.
"'The Day Was Hot and Still...'". The New York Review of Books. November 4, 1999. ISSN 0028-7504.
"Mr. Bush & the Divine". The New York Review of Books. November 6, 2003. ISSN 0028-7504.
"Politics in the 'New Normal' America". The New York Review of Books. October 21, 2004. ISSN 0028-7504.
"The Case of Theresa Schiavo". The New York Review of Books. June 9, 2005. ISSN 0028-7504.
"Cheney: The Fatal Touch". The New York Review of Books. October 5, 2006. ISSN 0028-7504.
"On Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007)". The New York Review of Books. February 14, 2008. ISSN 0028-7504. (With Darryl Pinckney; adapted from remarks delivered at a memorial service for Elizabeth Hardwick on December 16, 2007)
"Joan Didion on 'Election by sound bite'". Salon. 17 October 2008.
"Obama: In the Irony-Free Zone". The New York Review of Books. December 18, 2008. ISSN 0028-7504. (With Darryl Pinckney; adapted from comments made at a symposium at the New York Public Library on November 10, 2008)
"In Sable and Dark Glasses". Vogue. October 31, 2011.

Screenplays and plays

The Panic in Needle Park (1971) (with husband John Gregory Dunne and based on the novel by James Mills)
Play It as It Lays (1972) (with John Gregory Dunne and based on her novel)
A Star Is Born (1976) (with John Gregory Dunne and Frank Pierson)
True Confessions (1981) (with John Gregory Dunne and based on his novel of the same name)
Up Close & Personal (1996) (with John Gregory Dunne)
The Year of Magical Thinking (2007) (a stage play based on her book) ISBN 978-0307386410
As It Happens (2012) (with Todd Field; unrealized project)^[1]

Biographies of and memoirs about Didion

Below are biographies of and memoirs about Didion.

Anolik, Lili (2024). Didion and Babitz. New York: Scribner. ISBN 978-1668065488.
Daugherty, Tracy (2015). The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion. New York: St. Martin's Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1250105943.
Davidson, Sara (2023). The Didion Files: Fifty Years of Friendship with Joan Didion. Independently published. ISBN 979-8856871998.
Dunne, Griffin (2024). The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir. New York: Penguin Press. ISBN 978-0593652824.
Leadbeater, Cory (2024). The Uptown Local: Joy, Death, and Joan Didion: A Memoir. New York: Ecco. ISBN 978-0063371576.

Conversations and interviews

Books on Didion's work

Als, Hilton (2022). Joan Didion: What She Means. New York: DelMonico Books. ISBN 978-1636810577. (Companion book to the Hammer Museum exhibition of the same name)
Berman, Jeffrey (2010). Companionship in Grief: Love and Loss in the Memoirs of C.S. Lewis, John Bayley, Donald Hall, Joan Didion, and Calvin Trillin. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 978-1558498044.
Dean, Michelle (2018). Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 978-0802125095.
Felton, Sharon, ed. (1994). The Critical Response to Joan Didion. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0313285349.
Henderson, Katherine Usher (1981). Joan Didion. New York: Frederick Ungar. ISBN 0804423709.
Houston, Lynn Marie; Lombardi, William V. (2009). Reading Joan Didion. Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0313364037.
Loris, Michelle C. (1989). Innocence, Loss and Recovery in the Art of Joan Didion. New York: Peter Lang. ISBN 0820406619.
McDonnell, Evelyn (2023). The World According to Joan Didion. New York: HarperOne. ISBN 978-0063289079.
McLennan, Matthew R. (2019). Philosophy and Vulnerability: Catherine Breillat, Joan Didion, and Audre Lorde. London: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1350004153.
—————————— (2022). Joan Didion and the Ethics of Memory. London: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1350149595.
McClure, John A. (1994). Late Imperial Romance. London; New York: Verso Books. ISBN 086091612X.
Nelson, Deborah (2017). Tough Enough: Arbus, Arendt, Didion, McCarthy, Sontag, Weil. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226457802.
Nelson, Steffie, ed. (2020). Slouching Towards Los Angeles: Living and Writing by Joan Didion's Light. Los Angeles: Rare Bird Books. ISBN 978-1644281673.
Nowak-McNeice, Katarzyna (2018). California and the Melancholic American Identity in Joan Didion's Novels: Exiled from Eden. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0429655319.
Parrish, Timothy (2008). From the Civil War to the Apocalypse: Postmodern History and American Fiction. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 978-1558496279.
Rhodes, Chip (2008). Politics, Desire, and the Hollywood Novel. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. ISBN 978-1587297557.
Scarpino, Cinzia; Zehelein, Eva-Sabine, eds. (2023). Joan Didion: Life and/with/through Words. Berlin: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-3631894408.
Stout, Janis P. (1990). Strategies of Reticence: Silence and Meaning in the Works of Jane Austen, Willa Cather, Katherine Anne Porter, and Joan Didion. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. ISBN 0813912628.
—————— (1998). Through the Window, Out the Door: Women's Narratives of Departure, from Austin and Cather to Tyler, Morrison, and Didion. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. ISBN 081730908X.
Szalay, Michael (2012). Hip Figures: A Literary History of the Democratic Party. Redwood City, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0804776356.
Vandenberg, Kathleen M. (2021). Joan Didion: Substance and Style. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-1438481388.
Weingarten, Marc (2010). The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, Capote, and the New Journalism Revolution. New York: Crown Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0307525697.
Wilkinson, Alissa (2025). We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine. New York: Liveright. ISBN 978-1324092612.
Worden, Daniel (2020). Neoliberal Nonfictions: The Documentary Aesthetic from Joan Didion to Jay-Z. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. ISBN 978-0813944159.

v t e Joan Didion
Bibliography
Novels	Run, River Play It As It Lays A Book of Common Prayer Democracy The Last Thing He Wanted
Essay collections	Slouching Towards Bethlehem The White Album After Henry Political Fictions We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live Let Me Tell You What I Mean
Other non-fiction	Salvador Miami Where I Was From The Year of Magical Thinking Blue Nights South and West Notes to John
Screenplays	The Panic in Needle Park Play It as It Lays A Star Is Born True Confessions Up Close & Personal
Film adaptations	Play It as It Lays The Last Thing He Wanted
Documentaries	Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold
Family	John Gregory Dunne (husband) Dominick Dunne (brother-in-law) Griffin Dunne (nephew) Dominique Dunne (niece) Hannah Dunne (great-niece)