Loud and ClearNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pulitzer Prize–winner Anna Quindlen offers wisdom, opinions, insights, and reflections about current events and modern life in this provocative and inspiring book. “A tour de force for our time, [Loud and Clear] is equally as compelling as a look at public events as it is a reflection on being a woman and on motherhood.”—The Sunday Oklahoman With her trademark insight and her special ability to convey the impact public events have on ordinary lives, Anna Quindlen here combines commentary on American society and the world at large with reflections on being a woman, a writer, and a mother. In these pieces, first written for Newsweek and The New York Times, Loud and Clear takes on topics ranging from social change to raising children, from the political and emotional aftermath of September 11 to personal values, from the impact on individuals of global events to the growth that can be gained by spending summer days staring into the middle distance. Grounding the public in the private, connecting people to each other and to the greater world, Quindlen encourages us to develop authentic lives, even as she serves as a catalyst for political and social change. |
Contents
Goodbye Dr Spock | 7 |
Doing Nothing Is Something | 16 |
In Search of a Grownup | 24 |
Playing Perfect Pattycake | 32 |
Now Its Time for Generation Next | 38 |
Fall from the Nest | 45 |
Schools Out for Summer | 52 |
An Apology to the Graduates | 60 |
Uncle Sam and Aunt Samantha | 183 |
The Lone Pilgrim | 187 |
The Key to Success | 204 |
The Story of Us | 211 |
Off with Their Ties | 217 |
SOUL | 223 |
Life After Death | 234 |
Leg Waxing and Life Everlasting | 243 |
The Right to Be Ordinary | 118 |
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes | 125 |
The Call from the Governor | 132 |
The Sounds of Silence | 140 |
BODY | 147 |
The Reasonable Woman Standard | 155 |
Say Farewell to Pin Curls | 162 |
An Era Ends | 169 |
Sexual Assault Film at Eleven | 176 |
Aha Caught You Reading | 251 |
Poetry Emotion | 259 |
Imagining the Hansons | 267 |
HonestlyYou Shouldnt Have | 275 |
Werent We All So Young Then? | 283 |
One Day Now Broken in Two | 291 |
Every Day Angels | 298 |
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