2024 the best years of our lives reviews review

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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.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00U6DNZEY
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Twelve; Annotated edition (March 15, 2016)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 15, 2016
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2432 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 545 pages
Reviewer: Elaine Bitterman
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: She also has her pulse on the missteps and new directions that are taking us further and further astray from the beautiful ideal
Review: Peggy Noonan never fails, never disappoints. She is an observer of life in general, and makes the lofty world of those who have held positions of power in our country come alive, personal and real. Moment after moment I was touched and even occasionally brought to tears by the poignancy of her writings. She fully captured a young Jackie Kennedy's romantic and ever youthful spirit. She also has her pulse on the missteps and new directions that are taking us further and further astray from the beautiful ideals that created and have shaped our nation. She makes you celebrate our country, its citizens, its leaders, but then can also make you mourn much of its demise. A beautiful book!

Reviewer: BonnieB
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Interesting and worth purchasing
Review: I like the book but after while I started skipping pages or topics that I was not especially interested in. Maybe it is just the nature of a book that is a collection of previously written articles. Same thing with Chares Krauthamer's book so I just enjoyed the articles that I liked and skipped the rest. Peggy is a fantastic writer and I definitely would recommend the book.

Reviewer: John W. Pearson
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Poignant Peggy Noonan
Review: With dark roast coffee fumes satisfying my Saturday mornings, I frequently begin the day with Peggy Noonan’s weekly column in “The Wall Street Journal.” She rarely disappoints. While she was an acclaimed speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, she’s writes with an old-style reporter’s honesty and balance about all things that matter in our nation and on our globe—including what matters now about September 11.It’s been 15 years (as of this review) since we experienced those sad, jarring images of 9/11. (More on that in a minute.) Not surprisingly, Peggy Noonan’s thoughts on 9/11 are poignantly integrated into this amazing collection of the 82 columns and reports she selected for this book. (She started with three piles: the yes pile, the no pile, and the maybe pile. She re-read every column she’d written. Whew.)Peggy Noonan has become the plumb line for my political worldviews. She writes with integrity, care, richness, and wisdom. Her wordcraft—exquisite! Two examples from the 44-page introduction (don’t skip this—it’s memorable):“I think columnists—probably all writers but certainly columnists—are like baseball players in that they have good seasons and bad. They have hot streaks where they can’t not hit the ball. They have cold streaks: whiff, whiff, whiff. But baseball players know they’re in a streak when it’s happening, because of the stats. Writers only know in retrospect.”“There are writers who believe their impenetrability and lack of liveliness is proof of their gravity. ‘I’m boring because I’m serious.’ No, you’re boring because you’re boring. If you were serious you’d be interesting.”Noonan’s arresting choice of words require pen-in-hand underlining:Commenting on the “over the top” ending of a president’s Inauguration Day speech: “It is the kind of sentence that makes you wonder if this White House did not, in the preparation period, have a case of what I have called in the past ‘mission inebriation.’” Then she adds, “The most moving speeches summon us to the cause of what is actually possible. Perfection in the life of man on earth is not.”In the five-column section on “People I Miss” (Tim Russert, Joan Rivers, and others), she contrasts Margaret Thatcher’s farewell to a U.S. version: “No funeral of an American leader would ever be like that: The dead American would be the star, with God in the position of yet another mourner who’d miss his leadership.”If I were a pastor, next Sunday I’d read her April 2011 column, “What the World Sees in America.” That’s it. Then this congregational assignment: Listen. Discuss with three people sitting near you. Pray. Then exit and do something today. Noonan’s poignant point: “Remember during the riots of the 1960s when they said, ‘the whole world is watching?’ Well, now the whole world really is.” She adds, “The whole world [visitors to the U.S. and those on the web overseas] is in the Hilton, channel-surfing. The whole world is on the train, in the airport, judging what it sees and likely, in some serious ways, finding us wanting.”The chapters—neatly packed into 15 sections—are dressed in irresistible titles with potent phrasing you’ll borrow:--The Nightmare and the Dreams: How has September 11 affected our unconscious? She said that Sidney Poitier in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner “had a lovely kind of sweet intelligence.”--Snow Day. “It wasn’t obnoxious, just comic, a pure moment of the inevitable solipsism of a modern mayor in the media age.” That was Noonan’s line about watching NYC’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg use the occasion of his first big snowstorm as his “first big test.” Noonan: “We thought this was about the storm—we forgot it’s about you!” (“Solipsism” will now be making regular appearances in coming issues.)--Miracle on Fulton Street (Dec. 14, 2001). Noonan writes 93 days after 9/11: “My friends, this is the kind of column I used to do now and then before the world changed.” Oh, my. You will read this chapter to your loved ones. Being a 3-ring binder guy, this also caught my eye:“When the Towers tumbled, it created a reverse vacuum and papers were sucked up into the gathering cloud and dispersed all over downtown, the rivers, Brooklyn and Queens. But the binders the papers were in—the legal binders, the metal rings inside them—they didn’t survive.”She mentions a telephone repairman. “He had been working on a telephone pole in Queens. He heard the explosions, the lines went down on him and everyone else. A piece of paper fluttered down and he caught it. It was a business card. A few days later he called the number on the card and asked for the name. A young woman answered. Yes, she said, she was alive, she had made it out of the building. No, she didn’t know her business cards had made it to Queens.” Noonan then adds (her wit fills the book), “Hollywood: Use this. In your version they fall in love.”--What I Told the Bishops. “I quoted this dialogue (from “The Passion of the Christ”) to the bishops and the cardinal. And when I said the words Christ spoke in the film my voice broke, and I couldn’t continue speaking. I was embarrassed by this, but at the same time I thought, Well, OK.”--Old Jersey Real: The greatness of The Sopranos. Noting the “masterpiece” final episode, she paints this picture: “The drama of Tony, the great post-9/11 drama of him, is that he is trying to hold on in a world he thinks is breaking to pieces.” Then this: “His bluster, his desperate desire to re-create order with the rough tools of his disordered heart and brain, are comic, poignant, ridiculous, human.”Oh, dear—this is way too long. No space left to talk about Reagan as artist: “And the thing about artists is they try to see the picture whole.” Just a few more:--Reflecting on 9/11 after hearing Os Guinness speak, Noonan writes, “So: The firemen were rough repositories of grace.”--December 2005 column: “What Does It Mean That Your First Act on Entering a Country Is Breaking Its Law?”--November 2014 column: “The Loneliest President Since Nixon”--On Iraq: “When you have been catastrophically wrong, you have to bring a certain humility to the table.”--June 2014: “Pundits and pollsters have been talking about a quickening of the populist spirit, and the possibility of a populist rise, for at least a quarter century. But they’re doing it more often now.”--Flight 93: “No one said anything unneeded, extraneous or small. Crisis is a great editor.”Be safe!

Reviewer: steven leindecker
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: I read them again with great enjoyment and
Review: Peggy Noonan is a national treasure. Even though I am a regular reader of her weekly WSJ column, and therefore had read many of the pieces in this book, I read them again with great enjoyment and, at times, with great emotion. Ms. Noonan, in my estimation isn't so much a political commentator ( though many of her articles certainly are political in nature) but rather a chronicler of her times, an observer of our culture. My guess is that if Ms. Noonan were asked to write the NYC phonebook she would find a way to make it compelling, she's that brilliant with the pen. Anyone who doubts her brilliance should re read the speech she wrote for Ronald Reagan which he delivered at Normandy on the 40th anniversary of D - Day. I've read it several times and it moves me to tears every time.

Reviewer: Lindy Scott
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: one can see the best side of conservative politics and thought over the last ...
Review: Peggy Noonan is a gifted author. Through her writings, one can see the best side of conservative politics and thought over the last four decades. Nevertheless, she has a serious blind side: the negative effects of some Republican foreign policies. Reagan's support of the Contras in Nicaragua and of Rios Montt in Guatemala were immoral by any moral standard. Rios Montt has been convicted of genocide, yet Noonan continually praised Reagan who defended Rios Montt throughout his tyrannical dictatorship. Noonan's account of the invasion of Iraq is similar, although she does admit some regrets years after the fact. Overall, this book is a good read, but one needs a good dose of discernment.

Reviewer: Jim Pinkerton
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: This is a wonderful book--a great sweeping
Review: This is a wonderful book--a great sweeping, soaring overview of our age, with the occasional swoops and stops to minutely examine some notable facet of our rough-diamond of country. And occasionally, Ms. Noonan chisels off a bit of carbon, and we see the inner facts of things all the more lucidly.I highly recommend this book, which bespeaks Ms. Noonan's sophisticated love of country and history, as well as, of course, her way with the exquisitely turned phrase, which is manifest on every page. Moreover, although she rates as perhaps our most influential conservative pundit, she has, all these years, maintained a steely and sharp eye for the faults within the conservative movement.

Reviewer: jane Wessen
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Delightful!
Review: I have enjoyed her writing, her humor as well as her insights. This is a book one can spend 20 minutes with when time is short or a 2 leisurely hours reading - each producing the same relaxing effect.

Reviewer: OlyJim
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A great read! This is a collection that I expect to re-read over time.
Review: I have had a slight awareness of Peggy Noonan's work over the years but reading The Time of Our Lives has made me a great fan. Her writings over the years show great insights. I find that most of the time I agree with her point of view. But, even when I disagree with her point of view, I still enjoy her writing. I sense that she is a person with whom I would enjoy having a conversation. I do share her point of view that America is a wonderful country

Reviewer: Etta
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I haven't read this book yet but look forward to it when I have a bit more time. Very pleased with the almost perfect condition of the book./ highly recommended. Thank you.

Reviewer: Donna Ruth
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Vintage Noonan.

Reviewer: Roberto
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: "The Time of Our Lives" is definitely a great book. Informative, thought-provoking, and superbly well-written, I enjoyed it from the first to the last page and read it in a few days--though it's quite long! To say that I highly recommend this book would be inadequate. But I'm not impartial--I love Peggy Noonan!

Reviewer: richard schaefer
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: boring. too much detail.