**NATIONAL BESTSELLER •* ** *Didion’s reportorial pieces afford the pleasures of literature…. She is an expert geographer of the landscape of American public culture (* The New York Times Book Review).*** Here, the National Book Award–winning author of *The Year of Magical Thinking* covers ground from Washington to Los Angeles, from a TV producer’s gargantuan manor to the racial battlefields of New York’s criminal courts. At each stop she uncovers the mythic narratives that elude other observers: Didion tells us about the fantasies the media construct around crime victims and presidential candidates; she gives us new interpretations of the stories of Nancy Reagan and Patty Hearst; she charts America’s rollercoaster ride through evanescent booms and hard times that won’t go away. A bracing amalgam of skepticism and sympathy, *After Henry* is further proof of Joan Didion’s infallible radar for the true spirit of our age.