Rating: 
Summary: a must read
Review: Madam Secretary does a good job explaining how she balanced her career with her personal life. It's truly an inspirational story (especially for women). If you are all about the Clinton era, you MUST read it.
Rating: 
Summary: A Fomidable Yet Funny Giant Tells Her Story
Review: Madam Secretary is a wonderful autobiography of former Secretary of State, Madeline Albright.I found the book to be well written, informative and human. Albright has always impressed me as a straight shooter. The book puts her life on the table for inspection and she doesn't disappoint. Albright opens her life to the reader in discussing so many personal areas of her life: from her marriage to journalist Joseph Albright; to her surprise at its ending twenty-three years later. She is candid about losing a baby at birth, and of her identity as Mom to three girls. She discusses the struggles of balancing marriage, motherhood, advanced graduate education and a career. Madeline Albright's candor, humanness and sense of humor are most refreshing and I came away with the sense that she is a rather delightful down to earth lady who would be comfortable and honest in a conversation with most anyone she might meet. While she has pursued great heights across her lifetime, this lady seems to have her feet fairly well planted on earth. A wonderful signpost for me throughout the book of Albright's depth were the incidents where she is able to laugh at herself and make light of her goofs and missteps along the way. Albright is an intelligent academic and diplomat who has served as a role model for women, as hope for foreign nationals and as a formidable protectress of our nation's interests. As a naturalized citizen who grew up during Nazi occupation of her homeland, Albright shows her appreciation of our nation through the very human eyes and heart of someone who knows what life is like in the absence of freedom. Albright's subsequent devotion to foundational principles of freedom and democracy of the United States reflect her genuine appreciation for her citizenship and a mindfulness of her own family history. Beyond the personal aspects of her life, this is the story of an extremely brilliant American woman who dealt with a wide range of world leaders -- from the most admirable to the horribly reprehensible -- as one of the most visible official representatives of the United States during the Clinton administration. Clearly, the manner in which she conducted herself as Ambassador to the United Nations and later as Secretary of State points Albright out as a great American who has been consistent and courageous in her service to our country's foreign policy. A great lady candidly tells her story in an honest and classy way. Excellent read! Daniel J. Maloney
Rating:
Summary: Exemplary
Review: Madam Secretary is a wonderful capsule of a remarkable life and highly recommended for anyone who is as much of a current affairs geek as I am. While most will be drawn to read this book because of the insights Ms. Albright provides into the Clinton Administration's roles in the Middle East conflict, Kosovo, and North Korea - all of which are discussed in fascinating detail - some of the most compelling (and poignant) sections of the book have to do with her pain associated with the sudden dissolution of her marriage, the discovery of her Jewish ancestry, and her life in Czechoslovakia as a young girl. Ms. Albright's narrative voice is warm and inviting and utterly without pretension. This is my vote for the best non-fiction book of 2003.
Rating:
Summary: If Women Ran the World
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: An inside view...
Review: Madeleine Albright led a remarkable life - fleeing as a child across war-torn Europe, first from the invading Germans and then from the invading Soviets, the little girl from Prague came to America before a teenager, and ended up becoming the first female Secretary of State in American history (although, interestingly, not even the first non-American-born Secretary of State in the last half century!). She reinvented herself as an American, someone who fell deeply in love with her adopted country, even to the extent that her name Madeleine, isn't the one with which she was christened (although it is the French version of her name, and thus we are reading the memoirs of Madeleine, not Marie Jana Korbel). She weaves together her personal life and insights together with the professional experiences she has had throughout her various careers, culminating with the office of Secretary of State for several years in Bill Clinton's administration. Her father, part of the Czech government-in-exile, immigrated to America and became a professor (interestingly, one of his student was Condalezza Rice, one of the principle voices in foreign affairs in the current Bush administration). Albright thus had training from the very beginning in terms of both academic and practical aspects of governments and diplomacy. Albright's academic credentials are impressive, and her experiences in school shaped her later career. For undergraduate work, she studied at Wellesley College in Political Science, and then went to the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She finished her formal education at Columbia, receiving a Certificate from the Russian Institute, and her Masters and Doctorate from the Department of Public Law and Government. This is also where she got involved with political and media affairs in earnest. She was a White House staffer, including staffing the National Security Council, during Carter's presidency; during the 12-year Republican administrations in Washington, her career focused on the Center for National Policy, a non-profit liberal think-tank/research organization formed in 1981 looking at issues in domestic and foreign policy. This gave her continued presence in the field so that when the time came, Clinton tapped her to be the ambassador to the United Nations, and then later Secretary of State. She met and married Joseph Albright, part of a wealthy media family, and recounts in some detail and emotion the difficulties with the breakup of that relationship. She also confesses an affair with a Georgetown professor, and other difficult times in her life. However, these take a back seat most of the time to her professional career. Albright makes the claim to have not discovered her Jewish ancestry until late in life; there is reason to discount this belief, given that she is the kind of person likely to know the details of her background, and given that she visited family back in Czechoslovakia back in the 1960s. Reasons for not wanting to be identified as being of Jewish descent during her career are unclear, but in an otherwise very straightforward autobiographical account, this one point seems less than convincing. Albright does reflect with candor on many world leaders, including her boss Bill Clinton, and his wife Hillary; few of the key names of the 90s are missed here. Ultimately, one comes across with the impression of a erudite diplomat, a skillful politicians, and a sincere worker for the best interests of the nation.
Rating:
Summary: Better and More Candid Than I Expected
Review: Madeline Albright's "Madam Secretary" is a candid, fair account of the Clinton team's successes and failures. It never goes too deep into any one subject, but if read with Strobe Talbot's "The Russia Hand", and James Steinberg's "The Age of Sacred Terror," one can get a pretty good sense of what it was like on the inside of the Clinton foreign policy shop during the mid to late-90's, amongst a team that seemed for the most part to actually get along with each other, unlike the present. She admits that the administration took too long to engage in the Balkans, while pointing out that Colin Powell didn't want to engage the military there. She is candid about how the diplomatic avenues pursued at the UN during that effort almost failed, and points out the limitations and problems with the UN itself. Albright demonstrates great restraint in not pointing out the hypocrises and roadblocks put up by the GOP in the late 90's, and she instead affirms the differences of opinion that existed both inside and to some degree outside the administration on each issue as it came up. And given the revisionist history practiced by many members of the current administration regarding the war on terror in the late 90's, she clearly takes the opportunity to point out what the administration did, countering the "It's all Clinton's fault" mantra from the conservative media and book authors of the last three years. Her account may be biased because she was on the inside, but it is no less credible, and is in fact more so than those who were on the outside then throwing rocks now.
Rating:
Summary: MADELEINE ALBRIGHT'S MEMIOR BETTER THAN MARGET THATCHER'S
Review: MEMIORS Look at the subject then read on. Most of the reviews on Madeleine were negative, but personally think the book is really good. Madeleine's memior is was much more candid then Margaret's memiors which more textbook. Both had twins, Madeleine had 2 girls that look the same, Margaret had boy and girl. Madeleine had a divorce and Margaret didn't. I could go on forever, but I stop here. I hope Madeleine comes to my town's book store to sign her book for the customers. Thank you.
Rating: 
Summary: Mixing business and politics.
Review: Powerful and smart, persistent and captivating. All that sounds very convincing. The things that is missing - making money from the conflicts and destruction.
One could not find in this book a single word about making money on the post-war privatization in what used to be Serbia. They targeted 200+ publicly owned production facility but only couple of tanks. Then, Madam Secretary's firm was making sure, that its clients could get those factories for peanuts. Nobody could account for all activities by Albright Group LLC in the world, but its latest role in "helping" Kuwait with Iraqi debt is well covered in the latest edition of "The Nation" magazine
(...)
Someone will call it politics, others will call it business. Billion here, billion there - who cares, US taxpayers will cover all those debts and pay the price for the high ranking war profiteering.
Rating:
Summary: BRILLIANT BIOPIC FROM HIGHLY CHARGED POLITICAL ANNALS
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Candor
Review: There is nothing ordinary about her: her heritage, her history, her family, her career... Every single part of her life is so amazing... But this book offers you the most fascinating feature that makes her: candor.... Especially the part, where all the glorious days of office are over, strikes the reader with this candid definition of feelings which, I am sure, requires a great deal of courage... I wish, those who based their reviews here on their own political agenda, could be fair enough to acknowledge at least this courageous effort immune of any political or personal ambitions... Anyway, congradulations Madame Secretary!!!
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