According to Nathan Heller in The New Yorker, the book came about this way: "In the spring of 1967, Joan Didion [was ...] engaged to write a regular column for The Saturday Evening Post.

In contrast to the more utopian image of the milieu promoted by counterculture sympathizers then and now, Didion offers a rather grim portrayal of the goings-on, including an encounter with a pre-school-age child who was given LSD by her parents.

One critic describes the essay as "a devastating depiction of the aimless lives of the disaffected and incoherent young," with Didion positioned as "a cool observer but not a hardhearted one.

[9] In The New York Times Book Review, novelist and screenwriter Dan Wakefield wrote, "Didion's first collection of nonfiction writing, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, brings together some of the finest magazine pieces published by anyone in this country in recent years.

Now that Truman Capote has pronounced that such work may achieve the stature of 'art,' perhaps it is possible for this collection to be recognized as it should be: not as a better or worse example of what some people call 'mere journalism,' but as a rich display of some of the best prose written today in this country.