Product Description

Madeleine Albright is one of the most admired women of our era and the rst in American history to serve as Secretary of State. For eight years, during Bill Clinton's two presidential terms, she was a decision-maker and inside observer of the most dramatic episodes of recent years-from NATO's decision to halt ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, to the pursuit of peace in the Middle East. Now, in an outspoken memoir, she shares her story and provides a ringside view of world affairs during a period of unprecedented turbulence. Albright's story begins with her childhood as a Czechoslovak refugee, whose family fled rst Hitler and then the Communists. In America, Albright grew up to be a passionate advocate of civil and women's rights and followed a zigzag path to a career that ultimately placed her in the upper stratosphere of diplomacy and policy-making in her adopted country. Refreshingly candid, Madam Secretary brings to life the world leaders Albright dealt with intimately in her years of service and the battles she fought to prove her worth in a male-dominated arena. There are colorful portraits of such leading American gures as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell, Jesse Helms, and of a host of fascinating foreign ofcials-Vaclav Havel, Yasser Arafat, Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, King Hussein, Vladimir Putin, Slobodan Milosevic, and North Korea's mysterious Kim Jong-Il. Besides these many encounters with the famous and powerful, we get to know Albright the private woman: her life raising three daughters, the painful breakup of her marriage to the scion of one of America's leading newspaper families, and the discovery late in life of her own Jewish ancestry and that her grandparents had died in concentration camps. Madam Secretary is sure to be one of the signature books of the early years of the twenty-rst century-a tapestry both intimate and panoramic, personal and public, a rich memoir destined to become a classic.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #205892 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 576 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Albright proposes to "combine the personal with policy" in these memoirs, a sensible narrative strategy, considering her emblematic struggles as a working mother breaking through the glass ceiling of the foreign policy establishment to become U.N. ambassador and secretary of state. Albright's recollections of her background as a child refugee from Czechoslovakia and its twin scourges of Nazism and Communism (later, she accounts for the belated discovery of her Jewish heritage) suggest a basis for her belief in "assertive multilateralism." Although she laments coining this derided term, it's an apt name for her doctrine that human rights should be protected by the international community, led by American power. In the Clinton administration, this was the hawkish position, opposed by Colin Powell, William Cohen and others more cautious about military commitments. Albright treats these and other rivalries with restraint, but she is relatively candid about policy and personality conflicts, to an extent unusual in a diplomat and welcome in an autobiographer. Pitched at a popular audience, Albright's anecdotal style is engagingly direct, but it's not suited to mounting a comprehensive defense of humanitarian interventionism in light of failures in Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia. Albright is willing to admit mistakes, though she generally pursues the political memoirist's standard agenda of spinning the historical record. Filled with shrewd character sketches of world leaders, Albright's descriptions of the Balkan conflicts, the Middle East peace process and other critical negotiations are thorough and insightful. This memoir captures the disarmingly blunt purposefulness that made its author an irrepressible force in foreign affairs.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker
This memoir by America's first female Secretary of State is a deeply conventional book, full of long accounts of negotiations and reflections on the proper uses of American power. Albright is not out to settle scores (her criticisms of colleagues are mild at worst) and seems, on balance, pleased with the foreign-policy record of the Clinton Administration. This might have made a dull book, were it not for Albright's appealing character—personally ingenuous but professionally sophisticated, earnest but hard-nosed. Her eye for details—clothing, food, travel conditions—helps bring the diplomat's world to life, and her portraits of foreign leaders are lively and evocative. The result is a book that creates a sense of policy made by real people, not by world-bestriding titans.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

From AudioFile
Former U.N. Ambassador and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recounts her international relations experiences while working for the Clinton administration, blending details of both her work and her personal life in a nice balance. Albright reads accounts of her life as a working mother and public figure with a clear, professorial voice, befitting a stateswoman. Notably, she spends little time discussing the Lewinsky affair, focusing instead on the important achievements of the administration, often overshadowed by the scandal. Albright gives a detailed and personal glimpse into U.S. diplomatic affairs in the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, conveying her personal feelings, triumphs, and frustrations adeptly. H.L.S. 2004 Audie Award Finalist © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

Madam Secretary
This is one of the best books I've read in a long time. I also have a better understanding of Eastern Europe and Israeli/Palestinian conflicts.
Madeline Albright is a an excellent writer and a great role model.

Look at policy from a new angle
This is a great audio that peeks candidly into the life of a very famous person. If nothing else you should listen to it to get some historical relevance to a living leader. It is provocative and glimpses into the jet setting life and yet manages to down to the details of how she manages to get a professional blow dry for her very difficult to manage hair. This audio puts a nice twist on a very powerful lady. Better than the book.

A very good "read"
This is a very good bio ;read by the author which gives it some extra interest and dimension. This could have been a dry tome except for the little glimpses of Ms. Albright and her human side and how she used her humaanity to affect world policy. Further proof that " if women ruled the world..." is something to be considered. I believe that while Ms. Albright was at the helm as secretary of state , we were all a little bit safer.