Rating: 
Summary: Informative and entertaining memoir
Review: I normally don't read memoirs. Usually they are filled with the minutia of daily life and with lists of names of people, both of which hold little interest for the general reader. But I have always admired Ms. Albright, and after hearing her speak locally, I knew I had to read the book. I was not disappointed. She is able to present aspects of her personal life in such a way to make them relevant to her later professional philosophy and choices. She is very honest and forthright in how she presents both the good and not so good sides of her time in public life. She explains the background of events we all knew about but really didn't know about. Its a book that, for the most part, shows the right way to go about handling foriegn affairs. But besides being informative, she is highly entertaining. She has a wicked sense of humor, and is someone I'd love to sit next to at a dinner party. If you want a very readable book about our most recent past, by one of the most important decision makers of our time, read this.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent read
Review: I usually pick up books like this with excellent intentions and then rarely finish them. Not with this book! It is a fascinating and well written book. Particularly for those of us who don't spend all our time reading densely written academic speak.
Rating: 
Summary: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LAPTOPS?
Review: I was amazed that Ms Albright wrote this book with obvious pride and markets it so heavily. One would have thought that her failed administration would quietly slink away and hope not to be questioned about her public performance. Will she never stop her shameless self promotion and constant whining about the current president? If only she had courage, conviction and imagination she could perhaps have saved America from the terrible attacks of 911. If only she could have apologized for the selling of State secrets to foreign governments........if only she could account for the lost or stolen laptops from her own office. I fear she was too busy defending her boss and playing the aging courtier. The book is an insult to all Americans and a transparent attempt to vindicate a pathetic performance as Secretary of State.
Rating: 
Summary: How did Albright ever become Secretary of State?
Review: I was looking forward to this book as research material for the Clinton era, the Kosovo Campaign in particular. What a mistake. As an example of revisionist self-congradulation, 'Madam' Secretary has produced a well-written biography. But where is the self-criticism one should expect from a Secretary of State? She certainly admits some hard decisions, but no wrong ones (at least, not by her). We see again and again that inter-state (and intra-state) conflict muddies ethics, morals, and national interest. I just don't see how a political autobiography could come away so squeaky clean. Now that I've read the book, I think I can use it to wash the dishes (although it's a little heavier than a bar of soap). Her self-portrayal as a feminine icon flies in the face of global reality and conjures comparisions to Halle Berry's Oscar Speech. There are plenty of hard-working (and really self-sacrificing) women out there in greater positions of relative power: Look towards India, for example. 'Madam' Secretary doesn't cut it on an international scale. Politicians aren't saints. You know it, I know it. Politicians are faced with terrible realities of power, lobbying, and making decisions that always hurt a lot of people. The social reality is that showering doesn't remove the stink. Washing their clothes doesn't clean the stains. Hillary Clinton knows it - at least her bio was interesting. Reading 'Madam' Secretary's is like reading Chicken Soup for the Political Soul. Read someone else for the realism. If you want to sink your teeth into something substantial, go for one of Kissinger's, Clinton's (either one) or Roosevelt's bios (FDR, not Teddy). If you want to sink your teeth into something that's so sweet it'll make them rot, try 'Madam'.
Rating:
Summary: Well-written, informative, attention-holding
Review: I was pleased to find this book full of interest, both from the standpoint of one who wants to know more of Albright's very unusual and in some ways amazing career and personal life and for one who wants a good review of foreign affairs during the Clinton administations. She does not fail to tell of her in some respects sad personal life, including her moral failings, (e.g., her affair with a Georgetown law professor, named in the book) and outlines in readable and convincing style her activities as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and as a very active and successful Secretary of State. I was happily surprised by how much I enjoyed the whole book.
Rating:
Summary: from a leisure reader
Review: I wish I hadn't put off reading this book. I never imagined I would enjoy it so much.
I would have never thought a political novel would keep me anxious for every page, but hers did. I enjoyed the mix of serious commentary and humor. Although it seems that she could have written more in some places it does seem candid overall.
Albright's writing style is very comfortable. She sticks to the point and presents her thoughts clearly. I felt as if I was being told stories by my own grandmother. I have a newfound respect for Albright as a role-model for todays young women.
I especially enjoyed her personal accounts of the "non-public" side of several world leaders.
I see some reviewers complain that this book didn't have enough hard hitting politics, but it does say it is a "memoir." I wasn't looking for policy choices or political analysis, I was looking for history from the point of view of one woman on the inside, and I found just that.
Rating: 
Summary: Filling in What the Media Neglects
Review: If your interesting in knowing the truth about one of the 1990s most important foreign policy personalities, this book won't necessarily help. While it is an easy read with lots of details about what was happening behind closed doors, Ms. Albright also spun it to her own advantages. But that is to be expected. Considering her harsh handing at the hands of the right wing, it is good to get her point of view.
Rating:
Summary: Filling in What the Media Neglects
Review: If your interesting in knowing the truth about one of the 1990s most important foreign policy personalities, this book won't necessarily help. While it is an easy read with lots of details about what was happening behind closed doors, Ms. Albright also spun it to her own advantages. But that is to be expected. Considering her harsh handing at the hands of the right wing, it is good to get her point of view.
Rating:
Summary: A Far-Ranging Autobiography --- Readers Will Learn Much
Review: 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
Rating:
Summary: Lite-Albright
Review: Lite-Albright,
Making things up with Albright.
What a sight,
Making things up with Albright!
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