Madam Secretary: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Madeleine Albright (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 1, 2003

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.

Editorial Reviews

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 --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Miramax; First Edition edition (January 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786868430
• ISBN-13: 978-0786868438
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1.8 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #250,560 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Madeleine Albright is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Madam Secretary, The Mighty and the Almighty, Memo to the President, and Read My Pins. She was U.S. Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001. Her distinguished career of public service includes positions in the National Security Council, as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and on Capitol Hill.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

71 of 84 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The candid memoirs of the first woman Secretary of State September 19, 2003

By Lawrance M. Bernabo HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

"Madam Secretary" presents the memoirs of Madeleine Albright, the highest ranking woman in the history of U.S. government (despite what conclusions you might have reached about some of the First Ladies, Edith Galt Wilson in particular). During the eight years of the Clinton administration Albright served as U.N. ambassador and then, following the resignation of Warren Christopher, as Secretary of State. Half of "Madam Secretary" is devoted to that period of her life, while the rest tells the story of how a refugee from Czechoslovakia eventually became the first woman Secretary of State in American history and one of the most admired public figures of recent years (she was confirmed 99-0 by the Senate). The result is a book that is both candid and insightful. The memoirs of any Secretary of State are going to be of importance, but "Madam Secretary" is actually a good read.

Madeleine Korbel Albright was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1937. Her father was an official in the Czech government-in-exile who fled to London, where she remembers enduring the blitz. Her father served in several diplomatic posts after World War II and when the Communists took over Czechoslovakia in 1948 he sent his family to the United States, where he ended up running the School of International Studies at the University of Denver (where one of his prize students was Condolezza Rice). On the personal side of the ledger Albright talks about her marriage to "Newsday" scion Joe Albright, which ended in divorce, raising her three daughters, and learning late in her life that her Jewish grandparents had died in Nazi concentration camps.... Earning her doctorate from Columbia, Albright worked her way from being Edmund Muskie's senior legislative assistant to work for National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brezinski in the Carter Administration. When the Democrats returned to the White House in 1992, Albright moved into the upper stratosphere of American diplomacy where she proved herself to be a Wilsonian moralist whose hero was Dean Acheson.

In the most important parts of her memoir Albright provides commentary on all of the foreign policy crises with which she was involved, from Rwanda and Serbia to North Korea and Iraq, with NATO's humanitarian intervention in Kosovo being the episode that stands out most in my mind as the one she wants to present as being paradigmatic of what the Clinton administration was trying to accomplish in terms of foreign policy. Not coincidentally, it was also the specific policy on which she was the biggest advocate and primary architect. She does not make the explicit argument, but when you read of how her family came to the United States the policy seems a logical extension of her personal story. Clearly the goal was to avert a humanitarian catastrophe and not as sign of support for the Albanian guerrillas.

You will also find Albright's views on the national and world figures with whom she had to deal, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell, Vaclav Havel, Vladmimir Putin, Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, Yasser Arafat, Slobodan Milosevic, and even Kim Jong-Il. Of course, a recurring theme of Albright's book is how she had to prove herself in the male-dominated world of power politics, which lends a certain power to the scene where she describes waiting for the phone call from President Clinton where he told her he wanted her to be his Secretary of State. Albright consistently places the emphasis on presenting her side of the record rather than going out of her way to defend particular policies and actions. Her position on American foreign policy is clearly implicit in her accounts, but she does not go out of her way to be an advocate.

Obviously this volume will be a primary document for assessing the foreign policy of the Clinton administration. Albright comes across as being candid and self-efacing, while also provided insights into the goals of the Clinton foreign policy. Having long ago grown tired of the public statements of any and all government officials, it was refreshing to read what it was like to play this came from someone who was actively involved and has never been burdened by being an elected official. Ome of the biggest compliments I could pay to Albright would be that this memoir comes across as being written by a real person. She might have been a diplomat, but she was not a politician (an assessment that I think applies to her successor at the State Department as well). Of course she touches on issues, such as terrorism and relations with Iraq, that are of even more importance today. "Madame Secretary" includes a pair of 16-page color and black & white photo inserts and a chronology of Albright's personal and political life. This 562-page volume will be of interest to not only Albright's personal admirers, but anyone interested in the machinations of American foreign policy in the past decade (especially if they have read Michael Dobbs' "Madeline Albright: A 20th Century Odyssey," the obvious companion volume for a presumably more objective look at the same subject). Read more ›

38 of 45 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars BRILLIANT BIOPIC FROM HIGHLY CHARGED POLITICAL ANNALS September 27, 2003

By Shashank Tripathi VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

So I find myself a bit disagreeable when it comes to extolling Madeleine Albright. So what. ...

I am still fascinated by the chequered career of "Madam Secretary", who came from a Czech refugee family that first fled Hitler and then the communists. After reaching America, her zigzagging life eventually landed her in the upper echelon of American diplomacy and policy-making. This path alone makes this memoir worth every little centimeter of every frayed penny you spend on it.

This is an outspoken work, and it provides a ringside view of a world in unprecedented turbulence. No, I do not think the authors were fawning a political celeb. It contains a colorful portrait of several other big tykes -- the Clintons, Colin Powell, Jesse Helms, Vaclav Havel, Yasser Arafat, Ariel Sharon, King Hussein, Vladimir Putin, Slobodan Milosevic, and North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-Il. All this tirade, whether your polemical filter reconciles with it or not, makes for quite an interesting read.

As regards weaving an intimate and panoramic tapestry of Madeleine's character, well the writing is fluent, tight, and very interesting. I seldom devour politically charged reminiscences with such zeal. It is clearly self-billed as a "memoir, so I did not expect it to be a highly objective analysis of political stances, if there were such a beast to begin with.

In my book, this comes highly recommended. Will definitely not bore you if that is any consolation. Come to think of it, I guess it also makes for a great movie theme.

27 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars If Women Ran the World September 21, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

Madeleine Albright comes across in this book as an enormously genuine, honest and affable person - qualities one does not expect in the upper echelons of government, or in business for that matter. Her advice was always level headed and was delivered with only her nation's and the world's peoples interest at heart.

I had the good fortune to sit next to Ms. Albright on an airplane trip back from Korea and I can tell you from that brief encounter that she is the genuine article. We sadly miss her involvement in government given the state of world affairs today.

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A Far-Ranging Autobiography --- Readers Will Learn Much October 17, 2003

By Bookreporter

Format:Hardcover

In winding up her far-ranging autobiography, Madeleine Albright tells us with amusement that once, after leaving office as U.S. Secretary of State, she was mistaken in public for Margaret Thatcher.

It's worth a chuckle to the reader --- but there are indeed interesting similarities between the two women, even though their political leanings are light-years apart. They both reached the highest rank ever attained by a woman in their respective democratic governments, were fiercely partisan political figures, and held very strong opinions and were never afraid to battle for them (Albright's favorite expression for this is that she never hesitated to "push back" at those who opposed her).

Albright is best known for serving as U.S. ambassador to the UN in the first Clinton term, and as Secretary of State in the second. Readers of this book will learn in detail about the early years and long political apprenticeship that led up to those two high-profile jobs. They will also learn, in perhaps more detail than they care to absorb, about the many foreign policy crises in which she was a major player under Clinton.

The other thing about Albright that most people will recall is that only after she became Secretary of State did she learn that her family ancestry was Jewish --- that three of her grandparents had died in Nazi concentration camps. This personal revelation is duly covered but not dwelled upon in extraordinary detail.

Her life, though unsettled due to wartime exigencies, was not a rags-to-riches tale. She was born Marie Jana Korbel in Prague into a comfortably situated family. Her father was a respected Czech diplomat and college professor. Fleeing the Nazis, the family spent time in England during World War II.... They arrived in the United States when she was 11, and her father took a teaching job in Denver. She entered Wellesley College in 1955 and became an American citizen two years later. She married into a wealthy and well-connected American family in 1959. Her first political idol and mentor was Edmund Muskie, in whose doomed presidential campaign she took part. After the breakup of her marriage, her career in government and politics took off during the Carter presidency, her only personal setback being a painful divorce in 1983.

This is all dispatched in the first 100 pages or so of her lengthy book. The rest of it details her UN and State Department years with a thoroughness that seems at times compulsive. All the heroes and villains of those years pass in review --- Carter, Havel, Milosevic, Helms, Clinton, Putin, Arafat, Barak. The complexities of Rwanda, Serbia, Kosovo, the Middle East, Somalia and other trouble spots are laid out in prose that can get ponderous --- but her incisive personal portraits of these people lighten the mood.

Albright makes no pretense to real objectivity. She is a committed Democrat who admired both Carter and Clinton, and she defends them against all the charges that have been flung at them by their opponents. She defends such controversial actions as Clinton's successful ousting of Boutros Boutros-Ghali as Secretary General of the UN, and his policy of opening up trade with China and warily seeking a somewhat civil relationship with North Korea. Her two biggest regrets are the failure of the UN to stop genocide in Rwanda and Clinton's failure to forge a solid peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (in that regard, while gently critical of Israel on occasion, she holds Arafat mainly responsible for the breakdown). The two biggest villains in her cast of characters, not surprisingly, are Arafat and Milosevic.

There is naturally a strong feminist slant to her narrative. There is also a vein of sharp observation, character analysis, and even humor. The writing, when not bogged down in the minutiae of crisis management, can be bright, though we are left to wonder how much of the credit is hers and how much belongs to her collaborator, Bill Woodward.

Mercifully, Monica Lewinsky remains a bit player in Albright's narrative. Two other things, perhaps more important, are also missing: detailed assessments of the effect of the 9/11 tragedy on America's global course and the George W. Bush administration. Those would have made an already long book longer, but one wishes she had covered them anyway.

--- Reviewed by Robert Finn Read more ›