A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag : America Today Horror Book Review

“This is a book about love.” So begins Peggy Noonan’s enormously moving collection of her post-September 11 Wall Street Journal commentaries. On the morning of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Noonan began writing, and produced at least one essay every week through September 11, 2002. These candid, compassionate and sometimes heart-wrenching pieces are full of insights and observations picked up throughout the country—on experiencing the return of religious faith to a great modern city; on how the events influenced our perceptions of what it means to live in New York, or to be a man, or to take part in a community. Taking her own, her city’s and her country’s pulse, she administered a welcome dose of humanity, affirmation and inspiration, quickly attracting a large and loyal readership. This first draft of history—a record, written on the ground, of what it felt like to be an American that day, and the days after—balances the immediacy of the tragedy with its broader meaning for our world.

Noonan, the bestselling author of When Character Was King, brings to these articles her unsurpassed powers of description: walking on the streets and riding on the buses of Manhattan in the hours and days following the attack; watching, along with most of the country, the televised reportage, public announcements, expert opinions and tributes; witnessing our “post-incident heartache” and anxiety, as well as the “spirited gaiety of New Yorkers at this time in history.” By training our gaze on everyone from firemen, Catholic and Muslim mourners and the President to news anchors, bus drivers and school kids, these essays not only depict America in all its beautiful and diverse strengths but serve as an emblem of such.

At once elegant and tough, elegiac and proud, outraged and tender, full of street smarts and down-home wisdom, this book will help Americans understand their emotional and intellectual responses to those devastating events. For everyone who felt scared, saddened, outraged and humbled but not defeated by the horror of that day, here is a balm and an apt tribute to what we lost and what we learned about ourselves.