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Alissa Wilkinson's new book, "We Tell Ourselves Stories," draws its title from Joan Didion's most famous quote, that we do as much "in order to live”. Didion meant that we emotionally cope through narratives, and should be wary their obfuscation of reality. By charting Didion's personal relationship with California's mythos and her career writing Hollywood screenplays, Wilkinson unpacks Didion’s incisive writing on Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich and the empty narratives employed across the political spectrum she called "Political Fictions." Wilkinson, a film critic for The New York Times, writes, “The movies shaped us — shaped her — to believe life would follow a genre and an arc, with rising action, climax and resolution. It would make narrative sense. The reality is quite different.” Didion charted how American politics came to value story over substance. And Wilkinson says Didion's writing -- and own relationship with those narratives -- can provide us with an analytical lens for our current political landscape.