The Last Thing He Wanted
  • Published:
    Sep-1996 (Hardcover)
    Sep-1997 (Paperback)
  • Formats:
    Print / eBook / Audio
  • Main Genre:
    General Fiction
  • Time Period:
    Contemporary
  • Pages:
    240
  • Rating:
  • Purchase:
  • Share:
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "Didion at her finest" -- USA Today • An intricate, fast-paced novel about trying to create a context for democracy and getting hands a little dirty in the process, complete with conspiracies, arms dealing, and assassinations. From the author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I Mean

The narrator introduces Elena McMahon, estranged from a life of celebrity fundraisers and from her powerful West Coast husband, Wynn Janklow, whom she has left, taking Catherine, her daughter, to become a reporter for The Washington Post. She finds herself boarding a plane for Florida to see her father. She becomes embroiled in her his business even though "she had trained herself since childhood not to have any interest in what he was doing." It is from this moment that she is caught up in something much larger than she could have imagined.

Didion makes connections among Dallas, Iran-Contra, and Castro, and points out how "spectral companies with high-concept names tended to interlock." As this book builds to its terrifying finish, we see the underpinnings of a dark historical underbelly.
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EDITIONS
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    •  
    • Sep-1997
    • Vintage
    • Trade Paperback
    • ISBN: 0679752854
    • ISBN13: 9780679752851
    •  
    • Nov-2011
    • Fourth Estate (UK)
    • Trade Paperback
    • ISBN: 0007454244
    • ISBN13: 9780007454242
    • First Edition
    • Sep-1996
    • Knopf
    • Hardcover
    • ISBN: 0679433317
    • ISBN13: 9780679433316
    •  
    • Sep-1997
    • Turtleback Books
    • Hardcover
    • ISBN: 1417719036
    • ISBN13: 9781417719037
    • Library Binding
    •  
    • Oct-1998
    • Random House
    • Hardcover
    • ISBN: 0517268116
    • ISBN13: 9780517268117
    •  
    • Nov-1998
    • Random House
    • Hardcover
    • ISBN: 0517279088
    • ISBN13: 9780517279083
    •  
    • Feb-2011
    • Knopf
    • eBook
    • ISBN: 0307787338
    • ISBN13: 9780307787330
    •  
    • Sep-1996
    • Random House Audio
    • Audio Cassette
    • ISBN: 0679457925
    • ISBN13: 9780679457923
    •  
    • Aug-2016
    • Brilliance Audio
    • MP3 CD
    • ISBN: 1531812058
    • ISBN13: 9781531812058
    •  
    • Dec-2018
    • Brilliance Audio
    • Audio CD
    • ISBN: 1978604300
    • ISBN13: 9781978604308



View the Complete Joan Didion Book List