A Certain Idea of America: Selected Writings by Peggy Noonan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Noonan, a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, is a conservative Republican, but not a MAGA one. If the GOP was still where she is, I would probably still be a Republican. But it isn’t, and I’m not, and Noonan recognizes Trump for what he is. She doesn’t mince words about either party or politicians of any stripe, in fact. She’s very good at criticizing people. This is a collection of those criticisms and other musings, all of which appeared in the Wall Street Journal in her regular column there.
She writes well enough and I agree with much, maybe most, of what she says in the book. But there are some significant problems with it. It is highly repetitive. It is preachy. It is out of chronological order, so in some cases she has declared some things to be certain that turn out not to occur later. At times she seems prescient and other times foolish. I read this for my book club. It got boring so fast that I wouldn’t have read past the first third had I not felt obligated to complete it. As a reading experience Noonan is better absorbed in weekly or monthly articles, not all crammed together like this.