PATRIOTIC GRACE (Peggy Noonan)

Peggy Noonan is columnist for the Wall Street Journal and her essays on politics, culture, and current events have appeared in numerous popular and prestigious publications. She is a thinking conservative, a Reaganite whose appearances on various network television news and political shows usually inspire intelligent discussion and respectful debate over the pressing issues of our time.

In Patriotic Grace Noonan does a fine job of analyzing the development of our country's current political attitudes. She emphasizes our need to cast aside the superficial and work together for what is vitally important, the good of our country and the people in it. This book, made up in part of previous essays, was written during the recent presidential election campaign. The author is respectful of each of the candidates as she suggests how they should handle certain issues or deal with specific problems. She criticizes the arrogance and win-at-all-costs attitudes that have been displayed so blatantly in American politics (as well as other arenas) over the past 25 years and suggests that we need to display teamwork and caring and concern for our fellow man in order to return to the greatness embodied in our national history. Overall, her theme is that we as a nation need to get back to basics, to concentrate on again becoming one nation indivisible rather than a melange of warring factions, each out to win at all costs. Patriotic grace is the willingness to put country before self, something that has been sadly lacking in government and industry lately, to the great detriment of our country. Noonan is a thinker and she articulates well what many of the rest of us have been thinking for a long time.