Joan Didion (1934 - 2021) was an author and insightful observer of American politics and culture. Didion’s novels include Play It as It Lays and Democracy, and among her nonfiction books are Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album. Her memoir Blue Nights, was about the life and death of her daughter, Quintana Roo. Her book The Year of Magical Thinking was both a vivid personal account of losing her husband as well as a treatise on grief and mourning. It won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and was a finalist for both The National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.