"Some of the essays foreshadow contemporary events: Elizabeth Hardwick's moving report on the Watts riots in Los Angeles in 1966, and Hannah Arendt's "Reflections on Violence," which examines a "century of wars and revolution," written in 1969. Others, such as Susan Sontag's "On Photography" and Joan Didion's "In El Salvador," led to books that have since become widely known.".