The Time of Our Lives
Collected Writings
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4.4 • 23 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
The 2017 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Commentary and conservative icon Peggy Noonan offers her most insightful work, including her Wall Street Journal columns about the 2016 Election.
New York Times bestseller The Time of Our Lives travels the path of Peggy Noonan's remarkable and influential career, beginning with a revealing essay about her motivations as a writer and thinker. It's followed by an address to students at Harvard University on the drafting of President Reagan's speech the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded. Then comes one surprising chapter after the next including:
"People I Miss" -- memorable salutes to the likes of Tim Russert, Joan Rivers, Margaret Thatcher, and others.
"Making Trouble" -- Peggy's sharpest, funniest and most critical columns about Democrats and Republicans, the idiocracy of government, and Beltway disconnect.
"I Just Called to Say I Love You" -- Peggy's most poignant writing capturing the country's grief and recovery in the wake of 9-11, and clear-eyed foresight on what lay ahead in terms of war and sacrifice.
"The Loneliest President Since Nixon" -- tracking hope and change as it became disillusionment and disappointment with President Obama.
And other sections where Peggy discerns the mood of the country ("State of the Union"), the melodrama of the historic 2008 election ("My Beautiful Election"), her battles with the Catholic Church ("What I Told the Bishops") and lighter meditations on baseball, a snowy afternoon in Brooklyn, and motherhood ("Having Fun").
Annotated throughout, The Time of Our Lives articulates Peggy's conservative vision, demonstrating why she has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, journalism's highest honor.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Noonan (What I Saw at the Revolution), a widely read columnist for the Wall Street Journal, collects 83 of those columns and other works, most of them superb, written from 1981 to the present. When Noonan is on which is often her insights are acute, sharply stated, and extremely moving. She can be wildly funny, noting that the Boomer generation, when it was "faced as it grew with a choice between religious belief or existential despair, chose... marijuana." Having grown up in modest, slightly gothic circumstances, she seems delighted to travel in powerful, elegant circles, and she laments the coarseness of contemporary America compared to the society in which she was raised. Noonan's attempts to project a sense of humility feel strained, as do her raptures over Ronald Reagan and Jacqueline Kennedy. Nonetheless, most of her essays are captivating. She idealizes institutions and everyday attitudes that she takes to preserve and protect America's social fabric. She supports English as a universal American language, condemns illegal immigration, and detests Wall Street greed. A 2007 piece on Hillary Clinton and the visceral unease she provokes seems especially timely. In another piece, Noonan explores Obama's singular loneliness in office. The lasting message of this powerful collection is that the bubble that today's politicians live in, insulated from the people they govern, uniquely threatens the American commonwealth.
Customer Reviews
Calling the Editor
Wow! Saw this incredible lady on TV and knew some of her history, so had to snag the book.
What is going on though? Incomplete words, chopped off sentences in parts, missing punctuation.?”
I don’t wann believe its the book. Is it the system? Anyone else chime in here?
Say it ain’t so.
Haven’t gotten through the first part for the errors yet so it gets a conditional score till I finish the book but the errors are so glaring, the tech part gets a negative 5 (I’m not a writer by any means so when I can spot the errors-You know you're not on your game)!
I can’t believe they would put out a book in print with these errors in it.
Gotta rate on the writing though because she’s an awesome writer and I’d like more people to take a look see at her work.