The Time of Our Lives: Collected Writings

by Peggy Noonan

Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

INCLUDES NEW COLUMNS THAT WON THE 2017 PULITZER PRIZE FOR COMMENTARY


Witty, incisive, often prophetic and always original, The Time of Our Lives offers the best of Peggy Noonan's writing. Now with a new preface and columns that bring us through the 2016 Election, the book travels the path of Peggy's remarkable career showing how she became one of the most influential voices in America.



The Time of Our Lives begins with a revealing essay about Peggy's 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 and provides reader a majestic portrait of American life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455536283
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	11/03/2015
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	672
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 2.20(d)

About the Author

The 2017 Pulitzer Prize winner for Commentary, Peggy Noonan is the author of nine books, a weekly columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and was a primary speechwriter and Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan. Six of Noonan's books have been New York Times bestsellers. Noonan is a trustee of the Manhattan Institute. She makes regular appearances on CBS's Face the Nation, ABC's This Week, and NBC's Meet The Press.

Editorial Reviews

09/28/2015
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. Agent: Robert B. Barnett, Williams & Connolly. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"[THE TIME OF OUR LIVES] is an examination of the soul of a politics and a culture...This book helps, by teaching, encouraging, challenging, chronicling - by giving thanks and raising grave concerns, too, but always laced with hope illuminated by faith."—The National Review

"Noonan's new book shines...[Her] prose is marked by a democratic straightforwardness...She demonstrates a profound understanding of the ambitions that drive politicians."—RealClear Politics

"Noonan's eye for poetry in the mundane allows her to articulate the time of our lives, even as she appreciates each individual person's life and actions."—The Weekly Standard

"Bravo, Peggy Noonan. The English historian J. H. Plumb once said that what we need is more 'heart-wise' historians. Heart-wise Noonan certainly is."—David McCullough

"No one writes more beautifully about America than Peggy Noonan-our politics, our culture, our lives. She's the best friend every nation should have, the one who will tell you everything that's wrong with you, but say it with so much love, and such wry honesty that you can't help but nod your head in agreement."—Megan McArdle, columnist, Bloomberg View

"Peggy Noonan is a national treasure. Her words and essays have swept through decades, capturing events and moments. With grace and optimism, Noonan confides in the reader as she would a dear friend. And in a world that is clicking too fast, she reminds us how the best of life is found in the details: of where we have been, and of what we are now."—Matt Drudge

"Peggy Noonan's columns and essays are exquisitely written and perceptively argued. I am a devoted reader. Her writings illuminate the issues and provide a vision of our future."—Henry Kissinger

"Some people think politics is all about money and power. Others imagine it is all about philosophy and the power of ideas. Peggy Noonan knows, and teaches us all, that politics is about human beings living together. That means that understanding politics requires more than cynicism and more even than idealism — it requires sensitivity, experience, wisdom and insight. Noonan does more than tell us that: she shows us, because she possesses all of these in droves. She approaches the most pressing questions of American life with an appreciation for the highs and lows that make us all human, and a knack for seeing exactly what her subjects want to hide. A collection like this one helps us appreciate the enduring value of such insight: Noonan's writing is always about current events, yet also always full of timeless lessons on how to look at politics and really see it."—Yuval Levin, editor of National Affairs

"The only predictable thing about Noonan's column is its unpredictability."—Tim Russert

"Superb...[Noonan's] insights are acute, sharply stated, and extremely moving...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."—Publisher's Weekly

Conventional wisdom assigns most ambitious women to a place on the political left. So how, then, has Noonan carved out a remarkably successful career as a journalist, presidential speechwriter, and author on the political right? In this impressive collection of speeches and journalistic commentaries, readers hear the convention-defying voice that has made Noonan a national presence as an exponent of conservatism. Readers hear that distinctive voice in, for instance, an elegiac reflection on the exceptional normalcy and fair-mindedness of fellow journalist Tim Russert, in an acerbic indictment of President Obama for not joining with other world leaders in a show of solidarity after the Charlie Hebdo killings, and in a hopeful prediction of the difference Pope Francis will make for Catholicism. Addressing other topics-including 9/11, the Iraq War, Obamacare, illegal immigration, the machinations of both Clintons, and internecine war in the Republican Party-that voice varies considerably in tone yet develops a coherent perspective of sober concern about the trajectory of American culture and politics. But readers may value most the exceptionally candid and capacious introduction, in which Noonan reflects on her childhood, her maturation as a journalist, and her philosophy as a professional writer. A refreshingly spontaneous and engaging collection.—Booklist, Starred Review

"Thoroughly enjoyable and intellectually compelling... Noonan captures her subjects—people and society, moments and eras—with an excellence and durability to which I, as a writer, must aspire but know, deep down, I will rarely achieve."—Ross Kaminsky, The American Specatator

"THE TIME OF OUR LIVES is terrific...it's just great thinking turned to print."—The Buffalo News

From the Publisher

06/15/2015
Once special assistant and speechwriter to President Ronald Reagan, Noonan is a Wall Street Journal columnist attended to by politicos of all stripes and a New York Times best-selling author (e.g., What I Saw at the Revolution). Here, she ferrets out her best work, offering annotations and analysis plus an introduction that tracks her career. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Library Journal

The American conservative political revolution that took wing in 1980 made heroes out of politicians, thinkers, broadcasters, and Peggy Noonan—the journalist who chronicled its rise and influence. This audiobook contains her best writing about politics, life, character, and commitment to the cause. The narration of the book is a team effort. Noonan reads the introduction and does a credible job setting the book’s tone. The rest of the chapters alternate between the bright, sunny voice of Betsy Foldes Meiman and the smokier, more atmospheric-sounding Rena Marie Villano. Both do a terrific job of interpreting Noonan’s words, and each makes valuable contributions to the book’s tone and message. The result is a fascinating jaunt through America’s recent past and a set of ideas that will inform its future. R.I.G. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2016 - AudioFile

2015-09-21
A former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and weekly columnist for the Wall Street Journal assembles pieces from her long career as a conservative political voice. Noonan (Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now, 2008, etc.) never allows her political preferences to slip far beneath the flowing surface of her skillful prose. Although some of the pieces are from the early 1980s, most are fairly recent—or have some recent resonance. There will be some surprises for those who have not read her often. She loves The Sopranos, admires Jackie Kennedy and Tennessee Williams, praises President Barack Obama for a sensitive comment, and even zaps George W. Bush occasionally. She also chides the GOP for seeming to fall apart in the lead-up to the 2008 presidential election. But she continually celebrates an American past whose virtues she highlights while ignoring the social failures of segregation, the denial of equal rights for women, and the vile biases experienced by people who were not fortunate to live their lives in Ozzie and Harriet's neighborhood. In one piece, Noonan discusses the GOP's taking the South from Democrats without mentioning much about the civil rights issues that triggered that transformation. The author writes in praise of men like John Wayne (we need more men like him, in all walks of life), calls Reagan a great president (and slams Edmund Morris' unconventional Reagan biography, Dutch, 1999), and blasts the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church for failures in the recent sex scandals. There are sharp words for Bill and Hillary Clinton and Obama, whose health care initiatives she calls a "blunder" and a "miscalculation." Her eloquence soars in her pieces about 9/11, and she disdains frequent polling and bemoans the loss of privacy. Noonan is quick to generalize, to soak sentences in nostalgia, and to ignore contradictory or uncomfortable evidence, but she does provide moments that pierce and sentences that linger.

Kirkus Reviews