Rating: 
Summary: The candid memoirs of the first woman Secretary of State
Review: "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).
Rating:
Summary: The candid memoirs of the first woman Secretary of State
Review: "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).
Rating: 
Summary: Good, Not Great, Travelogue, not Strategic Dialog
Review:
This is a diplomatic companion to Hillary Clinton's lightweight personal story. Madame Secretary will never be confused with Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski. It merits comment that Hillary appears to have had a great deal to do with Albright getting the job. If you want a read that covers the years superficially, and glosses over a great deal of what actually did or did not transpire, this is the book for you. If you want serious reading about international relations, or grand strategy, or how to deal with the twenty big problems facing the world, see the other books I have reviewed for Amazon, including Joe Nye, Kissinger, Boren et al, Jonathan Schell, Shultz et al, E.O. Wilson, J. F. Rischard, and so on. Half the book is about the personal path to power, the other half is about very narrow slices of what the Clinton Administration chose to focus on--an administration where foreign policy and national security were largely on automatic pilot and very much in a back seat compared to domestic matters. Most troubling to me is the chapter on terrorism, chapter 22, titled "A Special Kind of Evil." In exactly 17 pages (.03 of 512 text pages), Albright manages to gloss over the fact that she deliberately and repeatedly sided with Sandy Burger in constantly suppressing intelligence that warned suicidal terrorism was on the rise, and took a back seat--or no seat--on the subject of devising a national grand strategy for counter-terrorism. She is proudest of getting $1 billion for turning our Embassies into bunkers, something 9-11 demonstrated to be inconsequential. She says "The response by the Clinton administration to the Africa embassy bombings and other attacks on our watch resulted in the apprehension of many terrorist suspects and established a strong precedent for international cooperation in fighting terror." This is absolute and utter baloney. The reality is that neither the CIA nor the FBI or any foreign governments were actually put on a war footing, because the Clinton's did not want to dim the lights and bear down. I find it quite noteworthy that "intelligence" does not appear in the index as a term. This is a book about travel and personal meetings, which is how Clinton's national security team spent its time. We have gone from that extreme to the other, of neo-conservatives who never served in uniform throwing military force around unilaterally and indiscriminately. The next president must find a middle ground, an informed middle ground where intelligence, strategy, policy and spending ("it's not policy until it's in the budget") are fully integrated, and America is able to devise a sustainable, strong, smart foreign policy that includes a robust homeland defense with homeland counterintelligence, a massive peace force, a considerable global constabulary force, and a big war force sufficient for two major regional conflicts at once. We cannot cut the national security budget by one penny, but by golly, we can do a *lot" better than either the passive Clintonians or the psychopathic Bushies.
Rating:
Summary: Smooth, captivating and thoughtful
Review: A fascinating story of a remarkable person who has served her country well.
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyable and informative, but...?
Review: Albright's view from the seventh floor and from around the world offers a variety of important perspectives on making foreign policy.
There are two underlying currents here. The first is that the book is very much a first-person account of foreign policy, rather than an exposition of foreign policy theories, themes, frameworks, etc. The second reflects the author's perspective and the time frame examined (the Clinton administration, both terms): American idealism and global progress are real and integrated.
Several chapters deal with concerns in Europe, especially the Balkans, and the Middle East. Perhaps most notable in its absence is insight on Russia or democratization in Central and Eastern Europe. For the former, a reader might be best directed to Strobe Talbott, The Russia Hand.
Chapters blend descriptions of policy challenges with personal anecdotes. All students, particularly those in or headed to Washington for internships and entry-level positions, enjoyed the behind-the-scenes views of life - personal and professional - in government. But several students, especially females, were disappointed or even annoyed that Albright felt the need to describe dealing with a spot on her dress, No man ever wrote he had to deal with a spot on his tie during diplomacy, they argued.
Nevertheless, it is informative and enjoyable view of the post-Cold War era, and will remain so even when Colin Powell offers his reflections from Foggy Bottom.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing biography
Review: Although I generally like biographies, this was a major disappointment. A sparse 90 pages..read in less than one hour, with even grammatical errors were a major disappoiontment.
Don't bother!
Rating:
Summary: 4 cheers for a truly great Secretary of State
Review: As a keen Christian supporter of morals based foreign policy I was thrilled when Albright began the Kosovo war and liberated the oppressed peoples of that region from being massacred by Milosevic and his crew. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the past, but who want a wonderful story of how someone overcame adversity in her own life and went on to help thousands of others from massacre and oppression. Christopher Catherwood, author of CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS AND ISLAMIC RAGE (Zondervan, 2003)
Rating:
Summary: Traitor in France
Review: As long as she's criticizing our government in France, maybe she should consider permanent work over there digging for truffles. A shameless, self-delusional biography but not surprising considering who her boss was. Oink oink.
Rating:
Summary: Madam Secretary: A Lesson In Diplomacy
Review: Defending an out-of-power administration is a full-time occupation for former presidents and cabinet members. Six figure speeches that they give at universities and other institutions are peppered with self-congratulatory praises for their work during their glory years in Washington. There is also no shortage of criticisms within these speeches directed at the current occupants of The White House. Former President Clinton and his underlings have been following that tradition by speechifying for the past two years with tales of investments in education, military, Americorps, a sound economy and record surpluses. It is enough to make listeners who hand onto every word at these speeches pine away for the 1990s. Mr. Clinton's second Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright is no exception. Similar to her former boss, Albright has been on the speech-making circuit as well. She also bolsters her positions in her new memoir from Miramax books titled, "Madam Secretary". The book could not have come at a better time for this media savvy former Clinton employee who has been facing mounting criticism for supposedly being milquetoast on terrorism, border security and foreign policy during her term as Secretary of State. Albright successfully refutes this perceived dovish ness with large chapters outlining an agenda mixed with compassion, engagement and the use of force when necessary.
Rating:
Summary: Don't Waste Your Time
Review: Don't waste your time. The only thing this book is good for is a sleeping aid. 30 seconds and you're out for the night.
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