The White Album
Published in 1979, The White Album is Joan Didion's second major essay collection and one of the central books about California in the late 1960s and 1970s. The title essay weaves together the Manson murders, recording sessions with The Doors, the Black Panthers, and Didion's own diagnosis of psychiatric distress, all held inside her clipped, exact prose. Other pieces examine water in the American West, shopping malls, Georgia O'Keeffe, Doris Lessing, and the freeway system of Los Angeles. Across the book Didion treats the period as one in which the old stories Americans told about themselves stopped holding together. The collection cemented her as one of the defining nonfiction writers of her generation.
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What you might want to know about The White Album
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Joan Didion's second essay collection looks back at California and the United States in the late 1960s and 1970s through close, exact reporting.
Bourdain often named Didion as a writer he wished he could imitate, pointing to The White Album as the clearest example of how to report on a moment without raising your voice.
No. Didion gives readers the context they need, though the book lands harder if you know a little about the late 1960s in California.
The White Album was written by Joan Didion, published in 1979 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
The White Album is 222 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The White Album takes most readers 3 to 5 hours to finish.
The White Album is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.