Certain Idea of America: Selected Writings

For a quarter century, Peggy Noonan has been thinking aloud about America in her much-loved Wall Street Journal column. In this new collection of her essential recent work, Noonan demonstrates the erudition, wisdom and humor that have made her one of America's most admired writers.

She calls balls and strikes on the political shenanigans of recent leaders and she honors the integrity of great Americans, ranging from Billy Graham to the heroes of 9/11. A thinker who never allows her tenderness to slip into sentimentality, she writes with clear-eyed urgency about the internal and external dangers facing our republic. She sometimes writes with indignation, but above all she writes with love-- and an enduring faith that America can be its best self, that its ideals are worth protecting, and that beauty and heroism can be found in our neighbors, in our history, and in ourselves. This book is a celebration of what America has been, is, and can be.