The White Album by Joan Didion (First Edition, First Printing, 1979)

Joan Didion’s landmark second collection of essays and one of the defining works of American literary nonfiction of the late twentieth century. Published in 1979, The White Album brings together Didion’s writing on California, politics, counterculture, celebrity, violence, feminism, travel, and the cultural upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s.

At the center of the collection is the celebrated title essay, which begins with Didion’s famous observation, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Across twenty essays, Didion moves between personal experience, reportage, memoir, and cultural criticism, writing about subjects including the Manson murders, the Black Panthers, the California governor’s mansion, the Getty Museum, the women’s movement, migraines, water and the American West. The collection captures both a particular moment in California history and the broader uncertainty of American life at the end of the 1960s.

First edition, first printing, published by Simon & Schuster in 1979. The complete 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 number line on the copyright page confirms the first printing. Bound in the publisher’s red paper-covered boards with navy cloth spine and white lettering, with red endpapers. In the original Robert Anthony-designed dust jacket with the $9.95 price intact on the front flap.

Condition: Very Good+ to Near Fine in a Near Fine dust jacket. The book is tight, square, and internally clean. The red boards remain attractive but show light fading/sunning, most noticeable along the upper portions and edges of the boards, a condition commonly encountered with this edition. The navy cloth spine remains clean with bright white lettering. The original unclipped dust jacket is exceptionally bright and clean overall, with only light handling and minor edge wear, including a small crease at the upper front corner.

A particularly attractive first printing of one of Didion’s most important books, retaining its original priced dust jacket.