Joan Didion has been an insightful observer of American politics and culture for more than 45 years. Her book The Year of Magical Thinking is both a vivid personal account of losing her husband as well as a treatise on grief and mourning. 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 most recent work, Blue Nights, is a mother’s heartbreaking tale, written in Didion’s sparse and eloquent prose, about the life and death of her daughter, Quintana Roo.