1. To what time period are malls "pyramids" or "climate-controlled monuments"?

2. What was called "America's fifth freedom" during the postwar years? What was the shape of the new frontier?

3. Who was Jere Strizek, and how did Didion imagine him when she was young?

4. What was Didion's dream?

5. What words come to Didion's mind when she recalls her dream of creating a mall?

6. What did the major tenants of malls want? What did the smaller tenants want? How was their conflict solved?

7. Why did the woman from Detroit especially like the novel Wonderland?

8. What qualities distinguish the three malls from one another? What makes them "the same place"?

9. What did Didion buy at the mall?