Political Fictions (Paperback, Vintage Intl)

In 1988, Joan Didion began looking at the American political process for The New York Review of Books. What she found was not a mechanism that offered the nation’s citizens a voice in its affairs but one designed by—and for—“that handful of insiders who invent, year in and year out, the narrative of public life.” The eight pieces collected here from The New York Review build, one on the other, to a stunning whole, a portrait of the American political landscape that tells us, devastatingly, how we got where we are today.

In Political Fictions, tracing the dreamwork that was already clear at the time of the first Bush ascendance in 1988, Didion covers the ways in which the continuing and polarizing nostalgia for an imagined America led to the entrenchment of a small percentage of the electorate as the nation’s deciding political force, the ways in which the two major political parties have worked to narrow the electorate to this manageable element, the readiness with which the media collaborated in this process, and, finally and at length, how this mindset led inexorably over the past dozen years to the crisis that was the 2000 election. In this book Didion cuts to the core of the deceptions and deflections to explain and illuminate what came to be called “the disconnect”—and to reveal a political class increasingly intolerant of the nation that sustains it.

Joan Didion’s profound understanding of America’s political and cultural terrain, her sense of historical irony, and the play of her imagination make Political Fictions a disturbing and brilliant tour de force.

General

Imprint:	Vintage Books
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	August 2002
First published:	August 2002
Authors:	Joan Didion
Dimensions:	203 x 132 x 18mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - Trade
Pages:	352
Edition:	Vintage Intl
ISBN-13:	978-0-375-71890-8
Categories:	Books > Humanities > History > American history > General Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political structure & processes > Elections & referenda Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Central government > General Books > Humanities > History > World history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945 Books > History > American history > General Books > History > World history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945 Promotions
LSN:	0-375-71890-7
Barcode:	9780375718908

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