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 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


Time Out New York
"Candid, [she] veers comfortably between the personal and the political. Offers a rare female perspective on diplomatic life."


Entertainment Weekly
"One of the most diverting political bios in recent memory."


USA Today
"Madeleine Albright has written a different kind of memoir...It's Albright unplugged."


Time
"Unlike other memoirs, it has hardly a hint of score settling."


Publishers Weekly
"Thorough and insightful. Filled with shrewd character sketches of world leaders...Albright's style is engagingly direct."


The New Yorker
"Her portraits of foreign leaders are lively and evocative...she creates a sense of policy made by real people."


The Miami Herald
" Albright's deft memoir is the quintessential tale of her transitional generation of middle-class American women."


The New York Times
"From mother and socialite to professor and secretary of state...she is frank, assertive...straight-shooting."


Dallas Morning News
"The fascinating story of a remarkable person who has served her country well."


Rocky Mountain News
"A fascinating mix of the official and the unofficial, the political and the personal."


Book Description
"It was a quarter to ten. I was sipping coffee, but by then my body was manufacturing its own caffeine. I still couldn't allow myself to believe. Finally, at 9:47, the call came. 'I want you to be my Secretary of State.' These are his first words. I finally believed it." For eight years, during Bill Clinton's two presidential terms, Madeleine Albright was an active participant in the most dramatic events of recent times—from the pursuit of peace in the Middle East to NATO's humanitarian intervention in Kosovo. Now, in an outspoken memoir, the highest-ranking woman in American history shares her remarkable story and provides an insider's view of world affairs during a period of unprecedented turbulence. The story begins with Albright's childhood as a Czechoslovak refugee, whose family first fled Hitler, then the Communists. Arriving in the United States at the age of eleven, she 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. She became the first woman to serve as America's secretary of state and one of the most admired individuals of our era. Refreshingly candid, Madam Secretary brings to life the world leaders Albright dealt with face-to-face in her years of service and the battles she fought to prove her worth in a male-dominated arena. There are intriguing portraits of such leading figures as Vaclav Havel, Yasser Arafat, Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, King Hussein, Vladimir Putin, Slobodan Milosevic, and North Korea's mysterious Kim Jong-Il, as well as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell, and Jesse Helms. Besides her 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 newspapers families, and the discovery late in life of her Jewish ancestry and that her grandparents had died in Nazi concentration camps. Madam Secretary combines warm humor with profound insights and personal testament with fascinating additions to the historical record. It is a tapestry both intimate and panoramic, a rich memoir destined to become a twenty-first century classic.


About the Author
Madeleine Albright, born in Prague, was confirmed as the sixty-fourth secretary of state in 1997. Her distinguished career in government as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and on Capitol Hill. She lives in Washington, D.C., and Virginia. Bill Woodward, a foreign policy specialist, has advised and written for Secretary Albright, Senator John Kerry, Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, and U.S. Representative Gerry Studds. He lives on Capitol Hill with his wife Robin Blackwood and their daughter Mary.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

For eight years, during Bill Clinton's two presidential terms, Madeleine Albright was an active participant in the most dramatic events of recent times - from the pursuit of peace in the Middle East to NATO's humanitarian intervention in Kosovo. Now, in an outspoken memoir, the highest-ranking woman in American history shares her remarkable story and provides an insider's view of world affairs during a period of unprecedented turbulence.

That story begins with Albright's childhood as a Czechoslovak refugee, whose family first fled Hitler, then the Communists. Arriving in the United States at the age of eleven, she 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. She became the first woman to serve as America's secretary of state and one of the most admired individuals of our era.

FROM THE CRITICS

The Washington Post

Madeleine Albright, who rose from comparative obscurity as a daughter of Czech Jewish émigrés to become the first female secretary of state and thereby the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government, has given us the memoirist's equivalent of a tease. She lets readers see something of the private and rather endearing woman behind the public fa￯﾿ﾽade and discreetly lets slip a few facts about her personal and emotional life, but Madame Secretary is a controlled performance, not a confessional. — Walter Russell Mead

The New York Times

Work harder, be tougher, have fun. That could be Madeleine Albright's mantra in work and in life. Now she has given us her memoir, although it is unlike any other by a secretary of state. She tried on the memoirs of her predecessors for size, and they just didn't fit...It will make a great Mother's Day present.—Elaine Sciolino

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.

Publishers Weekly