Madeleine Albright: A twentieth-century odyssey [Hardcover]

Michael Dobbs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 21, 1999

The definitive biography of one of the most admired women in America.

She was born Maria Jana Korbelova in Prague just before the outbreak of World War II, the first child of Czech Jewish parents. Almost sixty years later Madeleine Korbel Albright was sworn in as the U.S. Secretary of State, the first woman to hold the position. Here is the story of her dramatic life and rise to power in this meticulously researched biography that expands on the noteworthy research by Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs who, in 1997, first pieced together the incredible and nearly lost history of Albright's early life.

At the age of two, Madeleine was saved from almost certain death by being whisked to freedom after Hitler's invasion. More than two dozen close relatives died in Nazi camps. In an attempt to protect themselves and their family from further persecution, her parents kept silent about their Jewish roots, raising their children as Catholics.

Dobbs traces Albright's progress from a European ghetto to the corridors of power in Washington. He shows how Albright's life has been shaped by the great events of our times: the rise and fall of Nazism and communism, the Holocaust, the women's movement, and America's ascent to superpower status. Madeleine Albright is a tragic but ultimately triumphant tale of a woman's struggle against adversity that reflects the experience of millions of American immigrants.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This compelling, well-reported biography tells the story of Madeleine Albright, the first woman secretary of state--therefore the highest-ranking female official--in U.S. history. Its author, Michael Dobbs, was the Washington Post reporter who first uncovered Albright's Jewish heritage, which had been kept from her by her Czech immigrant parents, who fled to the U.S. when Madeleine was 11 years old. Her father, Joseph Korbel, was a diplomat serving in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, when World War II began. The Korbels managed to escape to England, but more than two dozen of her relatives (including three grandparents) died at the hands of the Nazis. Madeleine and her family were baptized as Catholics in England, and her parents never told her about her Jewish heritage or the circumstances of her grandparents' deaths.

Most of the book deals with Madeleine's life in the United States and the building of her career: member of the Wellesley College class of '59; marriage and then divorce from Joseph Medill Patterson Albright; her Ph.D. from Columbia, followed by jobs with Ed Muskie's senate office and Zbigniew Brzezinski at the National Security Council; the national campaigns of Geraldine Ferraro and Michael Dukakis; the 1993 appointment as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "Madeleine was attracted to power as a swan is attracted to water," writes Dobbs. Her house in Georgetown, only a few blocks from the residences of Katherine Graham and Pamela Harriman, became a foreign-policy salon.

Albright has more star power than any secretary of state since Henry Kissinger, and she can take credit for increasing public interest and awareness of foreign affairs. Her personality is a "contradictory mix of insecurity and assertiveness, vulnerability and determination, pleasantness and steeliness," Dobbs writes. "Madeleine's life may have been a 'fairy tale,' in her phrase, but it was a fairy tale of her own making." At the heart of his assessment of her life is the secret of her family's past and how it drove her need for success as well as her views on foreign policy. Albright herself admits the seminal event affecting all of her views about foreign policy was the West's initial appeasement of Hitler and his takeover of her native Prague. "I saw," she once said, "what happened when a dictator was allowed to take over a piece of a country and the country went down the tubes. And I saw the opposite during the war when America joined the fight." Such feelings are essential background in understanding Albright's role in shaping American policy toward foreign intervention, particulary in Eastern Europe. --Linda Killian

From Publishers Weekly

Not long after she was sworn in as the first female American secretary of state, Albright, a Czech immigrant, was the subject of a Washington Post Magazine article that revealed to the worldAand, Albright has maintained, to herselfAthat she is the daughter of Jews who converted to Catholicism before WWII. Dobbs, the author of that article, stretches his scoop into a full-length biography that focuses more on the personal than on the political. Dobbs doesn't believe Albright's claim that she didn't know about her Jewish heritage, writing that "there are simply too many contradictions and inconsistencies in her story for it to be believable." But he doesn't really fault her for her alleged evasionAat least not strongly. Instead, Dobbs takes Albright's roots as a cue to tell a great story animated by the very American themes of outstanding achievement and the reinvention of the self. As he pursues these themes, Dobbs takes readers back to mid-century Prague, where Albright's father pursued a diplomatic career (and studiously concealed his Jewish roots). He meticulously traces the travails of her relatives under Nazi and Stalinist rule before moving on to Albright's student days at Wellesley, her marriage to Joe Albright, the scion of a WASP newspaper dynasty and, after their divorce, her creation of herself as a big-time player in American politics and diplomacy. Dobbs's concluding comparison of Albright and Jay Gatsby, while hammering home the theme of self-invention, doesn't take into account the quality of the self being invented. Yet, on the whole, this is a balanced and fairly sympathetic narrative of a remarkable American life.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 466 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; 1st edition (April 21, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805056599
• ISBN-13: 978-0805056594
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,750,649 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional and fascinating- a great reading group book!, May 13, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Madeleine Albright: A twentieth-century odyssey (Hardcover)

What a fabulous book! I couldn't put it down. Having read this book, I have a new appreciation for Madeleine Albright as a woman who raised her children and then started a career which took her to the top. Dobbs is deeply sensitive to this, and you get the feeling that even as she climbs the ladder to her ultimate success, she wonders whether she is up to the job that lies ahead. Don't we women all have this experience at one time or another, even as we stop what we are doing to raise our children? Dobbs seems to have presented Albright with the only family tree she has even seen. He found branches of her family she never knew existed. The tragedy which befell her family in the Holocaust is not in vain - at the end of a century which molded and shaped her family, she has found them all again. A riveting story and it's beautifully written - I highly recommend this book.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Excellent Book, July 14, 2000

By 

Courtney L. Lewis "Sassy Librarian" (Kingston, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Madeleine Albright: A twentieth-century odyssey (Hardcover)

Dobbs has produced an amazing piece of research and journalism. Practically half the book is devoted to a meticulous charting of Madeleine's parents, the Korbels, and their narrow escape from the Holocaust and later the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia. Following them to America, Dobbs shows how Madeliene's drive and natural intelligence lead her to assimilate seamlessly into American culture and graduate from Wellesley College. I think the author also does an excellent job charting the conflicts for women of this period and demonstrates how Albright succeeds in constantly acquiring new skills and a network of influential friends and colleagues during a time when she could have been simply a "supportive housewife". His insider look at her political career in New York and Washington is fascinating and very informative.

Perhaps Dobbs deserves to be best congratulated on developing a three-dimensional picture of a complex woman - no saint but instead a powerful human figure in our time.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb!, May 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Madeleine Albright: A twentieth-century odyssey (Hardcover)

Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth Century Odyssey is a wonderful read. It is packed with new material about Madeleine Albright and insights into her life, beginning with a painfully vivid reconstruction of the deaths of many of her family members in the Holocaust. It shows how Albright has drawn on the drive and resourcefulness of her ancestors in Central Europe to make it to the top in America. The Blackman book, to which the previous reviewer refers, pales by comparison.

Dobbs has interviewed many more people than his competitor, and his research is much more thorough. If you only have time for one Albright book, make it this one!