What I Saw at the Revolution: A Political Life in the Reagan Era [Paperback]

Peggy Noonan (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 14, 2003

On the hundredth anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth comes the twentieth-anniversary edition of Peggy Noonan’s critically acclaimed bestseller What I Saw at the Revolution, for which she provides a new Preface that demonstrates this book’s timeless relevance. As a special assistant to the president, Noonan worked with Ronald Reagan—and with Vice President George H. W. Bush—on some of their most memorable speeches. Noonan shows us the world behind the words, and her sharp, vivid portraits of President Reagan and a host of Washington’s movers and shakers are rendered in inimitable, witty prose. Her priceless account of what it was like to be a speechwriter among bureaucrats, and a woman in the last bastion of male power, makes this a Washington memoir that breaks the mold—as spirited, sensitive, and thoughtful as Peggy Noonan herself.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Noonan left a job as writer for Dan Rather at CBS-TV to join Reagan's White House as a speechwriter; later she helped Geoge Bush defeat Michael Dukakis, devising such catch phrases as "a thousand points of light." Part political memoir, part autobiography, this conversational, effusive, anecdotal reminiscence offers a reverential portrait of ex-president Reagan ("probably the sweetest, most innocent man ever to serve in the Oval Office") that at times borders on embarrassing, schoolgirlish adulation. Not surprisingly, perhaps, she gives us Reagan's view of himself instead of detached analysis. She discusses White House in-fighting, the 1984 presidential campaign, key speeches she wrote or helped shape, her clash with Don Regan, the drive to win public support for the contras. There are cameos of Pat Buchanan, Larry Speakes, Andy Rooney, Bill Moyers and others, along with an extended defense of conservative ideology and policies. First serial to New York Times Magazine, Mirabella and Saturday Evening Post; BOMC altenate.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“A welcome oasis in the desert of political memoirs... likely to be the most honest, lucid and enjoyable look at the Reagan White House that we’ll get.”
—The Dallas Morning News

“An engaging book, the story of how a plucky and talented young person literally wrote her way into a previously all-male domain.”
—The Washington Post Book World

“Noonan has written the funniest, most richly textured, nervously self-effacing and deftly observed political memoir...to come out of the 1980s.” —Time

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (October 14, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812969898
• ISBN-13: 978-0812969894
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #367,539 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #50 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( R ) > Reagan, Ronald

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Candide on the NY-DC shuttle. March 15, 2004

By Michael Albert Riccardi

Format:Paperback

Peggy Noonan's political coming-of-age memoir is a delight for anyone, liberal or conservative. Noonan, a resolutely middle-class product of Long Island, New Jersey and Fairleigh Dickinson University, wrote first for Dan Rather, the CBS anchor, and then Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

She offers a wonderful recounting of her flirtation with and eventual repulsion from the American left, most vividly in her description of a bus trip to a Washington antiwar protest. It's a dim echo, really, of the intellectual journey taken by her political hero, Reagan.

Her recollection of the Reagan speechwriting shop is as compelling as any scene from Toby Ziegler's office in TV's "The West Wing." It rings true and its very exciting reading, even to this day. Also, her practical advice on political speechwriting is useful and valid whether you are a Democrat or Republican.

Working in that speechwriting shop, Noonan gave Reagan some of his most successful emotional appeals: The D-Day anniversary paean to "The Boys of Pointe du Hoc," the tribute to the Challenger astronauts. She followed that up with one of the most effective political attacks in US political history, George H.W. Bush's evisceration of his 1988 opponent, Michael Dukakis, at the New Orleans GOP convention.

I dock the book one star because of Noonan's lack of objectivity regarding Reagan, whom she loves like a kindly, if remote, grandfather. However, "What I Saw ..." is very much her best work. Her later books are either polemics or treacly valentines. Too bad, because she's such a wonderful memoirist.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful and amusing account of the Reagan White House March 22, 2000

By dcreader VINE™ VOICE

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Peggy Noonan's memoir of her years in the Reagan White House is beautifully written and highly entertaining. She details the constant struggle between Reagan's speechwriters and his policy drones (the NSC staff is a particular nemesis) to shape the message. In the end, though, Reagan's views come across as his own. It is clear that although he had speechwriters to help him, he was more highly engaged in the speechwriting process than some (see "reader from Atlanta") would have you believe. There are also plenty of examples of where Reagan overruled his timid advisors and spoke out boldly, examples being his Berlin Wall speech and the "Evil Empire" speech. Overall, Noonan's memoirs is a great portrait of some of the pettiness of those who work in government and will makes you yearn again for a President who was "simple" enough to know what he believed without needing a pollster to tell him on every subject from whether to sign a welfare reform bill to where he and his family should take their summer vacations.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Reliving the Glory That Was The Reagan Revolution April 15, 2000

By Danielle

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Peggy Noonan's account of life in the Reagan White House is clever, insightful and inspiring. Her vivid descriptons of the West Wing and Executive Office make you feel as if you are sitting right beside her as she crafts the speeches that for many defined the Reagan Presidency. In addition, I enjoyed the autobiographical elements of this book--which included Ms. Noonan's background and formation of her political ideology. In a straightforward, unpretentious style, both Ms. Noonan (and her former boss)remind us that there is still an American dream worth achieving.