SLOUCHING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM

First edition, first printing. Signed by the author. Publisher's original grey paper covered boards, stamped in blind and orange cloth with gilt titles to the spine, in the Lawrence Ratzkin designed dustwrapper. Top edge pink. An excellent near fine copy, the binding square and firm with a little bumping at the spine tips and a thin strip of toning to the extreme upper edge. The contents, with a tiny in name to the top right corner of the front endpaper, are otherwise clean throughout. Complete with the lightly rubbed and creased dustwrapper that is without fading, loss or tears. Not price-clipped ($4.95 to the upper front flap).

Signed by Joan Didion in black ink on the title page. On first publication of Joan Didion's seminal essay collection, (the title taken from W. B. Yeats' poem 'The Second Coming'), novelist and screenwriter Dan Wakefield wrote for the The New York Times Book Review "Didion's first collection of nonfiction writing, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, brings together some of the finest magazine pieces published by anyone in this country in recent years. Now that Truman Capote has pronounced that such work may achieve the stature of 'art', perhaps it is possible for this collection to be recognized as it should be: not as a better or worse example of what some people call 'mere journalism,' but as a rich display of some of the best prose written today in this country".