The Occasional Observer

Five of her books have been New York Times bestsellers, a number garnering the highest critical praise. On publication of her first book, the political classic What I Saw at the Revolution, the author Wilfred Sheed wrote on the front page of the New York Times Book Review that Noonan's work was "hauntingly...elegiac. She does full justice to the joy of writing....Ms Noonan can evoke a mood like nobody's business...fairly rocks with life." On the front page of the Washington Post Book World, Reid Beddow called her "The poet laureate of resurgent Republicanism...Noonan writes speeches like an angel...hilarious reading." In Vogue Magazine Maureen Dowd's review said, "As Edith Wharton wrote about the foibles of New York Society, Noonan skewers the pompous manners and mores of Washington's power elite with a quirky prose style that shifts free verse, short cinematic takes, and luxuriant description." Of her second book, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, the New York Times said, "You read her in thrall to her striking ability to behold great vistas through a pinhole...in language that is always concrete and vital." Her biography of Ronald Reagan, When Character Was King, for which she interviewed the family, colleagues and closest friends of the former president, is considered a classic of its kind, and a reliable resource for those seeking insight into the facts of Reagan's life.