Peggy Noonan's coming collection: "A Certain Idea of America"
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Cover: Portfolio Books
Peggy Noonan — the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Declarations" columnist for The Wall Street Journal, and renowned speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan — will be out Nov. 12 (the week after the election) with "A Certain Idea of America," a collection that ranges from Ulysses S. Grant to Taylor Swift.
Why it matters: Noonan's publisher calls it a "master class in how to eloquently see and love our country," and bills Noonan as a "moral compass for Americans who value character, love of country, and civility."
Topics include: The greats (Billy Graham, Queen Elizabeth, the Pilgrim), defining issues (COVID, #MeToo, pronouns), what could do us in (nuclear war and AI) — plus Donald Trump and Joe Biden (both in Chapter 5: "It Appears He Didn't Take My Advice").
Peggy tells Axios' Mike Allen the title "comes from a rewriting of Charles de Gaulle —'All my life I have had a certain idea of France' — and came about when we went through my work and saw a consistent and similar theme of a certain idea, but of this country":
"The book contains heroes and villains and controversies and the great daily tugging this way and that that eventually yields up: history. It's about the greatness of Tom Wolfe and Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, it's about what it is to take a political stand in America, and as a woman, in the current communications reality. It's about taking a stick to bad entertainment in [a column called] 'The Uglification of Everything.' It's about falling in love with Tolstoy's 'War and Peace.' It's about my great Aunt JaneJane, [an] Irish immigrant to America ... It's about why Bob Dylan is a genius."
Peggy gives us a tour of her wall (photo above): "The LINCOLN COLLAGE was made by me in the 1970s. It includes my most admired figures: old Abe, Eugene O'Neill, Carson McCullers and Marlon Brando, heroes all. Also, a 1972 telegram from Mademoiselle magazine telling me I'd be chosen as a guest editor. And my CBS page badge from the 1970s!"
- "To the left: Me and Margaret Thatcher ... Also on the wall: pictures of my 12-year-old son with Ronald Reagan and Nancy ... Joe DiMaggio and Dwight Eisenhower ... my Presidential Commission ... Crayon drawing by my son, then age 9, and a letter from David McCullough."
Noonan is represented by Robert Barnett of Williams & Connolly.
