Madam Secretary

“One of the most diverting political bios in recent memory.” -- Entertainment Weekly Revised and updated with a new epilogue, Madam Secretary is the moving and inspiring memoir of one of the most distinguished public figures in American history, seven-time New York Times bestselling author and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright A national bestseller on its first publication in 2003, Madam Secretary is the riveting personal story of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. For eight years, during Bill Clinton’s two presidential terms, Albright was an active participant in some of the most dramatic events of our time—from the pursuit of peace in the Middle East to NATO’s humanitarian intervention in Kosovo. In this thoughtful memoir, one of the most admired women in American history shares her remarkable story, including thoughts on her upbringing in Czechoslovakia and her role as a wife and mother, and provides an insider’s view on global affairs during this period of extraordinary turbulence. Madam Secretary offers an inimitable blend of Albright’s warm humor, personal recollection, and riveting insight on events that shaped our nation and our world.

No American envoy has ever burst on the diplomatic scene and grabbed center stage in the theater of foreign relations like Madeleine Albright. Navigating difficult terrain as few can, Thomas Blood provides exclusive interviews with, and revealing anecdotes from, politicians, friends, adversaries, and colleagues, including former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Senators Leahy, Mikulski, Kerrey, Helms, Reid, and Rockefeller, and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt. This unique biography reveals the dramatic story of the first woman U.S. Secretary of State. Rather than providing a simple chronology, Blood focuses on the defining moments in Madeleine Albright's life, identifying the periods that best open a window on the Secretary of State's uncanny ability to triumph over adversity, her unparalleled success in politics and her meteoric rise to dominance in the world of foreign policy. From her family's thrilling escape from Czechoslovakia to her astounding rise to power to her victories and setbacks as the head of American foreign policy, Madeleine Albright's life unfolds like a major motion picture. An immensely readable biography that illuminates key experiences in Albright's career and personal life, Madam Secretary introduces us to Madeleine Albright the person, the politician, the policymaker-- a woman for our times.

A biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor, the first woman to be appointed to the United States Cabinet.

The daughter of a Czechoslovakian diplomat, Madeleine Korbel grew up in the troubled Europe of World War II. Fleeing first Nazism then communism, the Korbels finally settled in the United States while Madeleine was still a child. She attended Wellesley College, married Joseph Albright, and raised three daughters. She also earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University, and became a foreign policy adviser to several American politicians. After serving President Bill Clinton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, she was appointed as the first female secretary of state. Since leaving that prestigious post, Madeleine Albright has continued to write, speak, and teach. She remains a committed advocate of democracy and a believer in the power we all have to shape our future into one worth embracing. Book jacket.

In The Road to Character David Brooks, best-selling author of The Social Animal and New York Times columnist, explains why selflessness leads to greater success You could say there are two kinds of virtues in the world, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues. The résumé virtues are the ones you list on your CV, the skills that contribute to external success. The eulogy virtues are deeper. They're what get talked about at your funeral and they are usually the virtues that exist at the core of your being - whether you are kind, brave, honest or faithful, what kind of relationships you formed over your lifetime. In this urgent and soul-searching book, David Brooks explores the road to character. We live in a culture that encourages us to think about how to be wealthy and successful, but which leaves many of us inarticulate about how to cultivate the deepest inner life. We know that this deeper life matters, but it becomes subsumed by the day-to-day, and the deepest parts of who we are go unexplored and unstructured. The Road to Character connects us once again to an ancient moral tradition, a tradition that asks us to confront our own weaknesses and grow in response, rather than shallowly focus on our good points. It is a focus David Brooks believes all of us - including himself - need to reconnect with now. Telling the stories of people through history who have exemplified the different activities that contribute to a deeper existence, Brooks uses the diverse lives of individuals such as George Eliot, Dwight Eisenhower and Augustine to explore traits such as self-mastery, dignity, vocation and love. He hopes that through considering their lives it will fire the longing we all have to be better, to find the path to character. David Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times and frequent broadcaster. His previous books include the bestsellers The Social Animal and Bobos in Paradise. His New York Times columns reach over 800,000 readers across the globe.

On November 9, 1989, a mob of jubilant Berliners dismantled the wall that had divided their city for nearly forty years; this act of destruction anticipated the momentous demolition of the European communist system. Within two years, the nations of the former Eastern Bloc toppled their authoritarian regimes, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist, fading quietly into the shadows of twentieth century history and memory. By the end of 1991, the United States and other Western nations celebrated the demise of their most feared enemy and reveled in the ideological vindication of capitalism and liberal democracy. As author Hal Brands compellingly demonstrates, however, many American diplomats and politicians viewed the fall of the Soviet empire as a mixed blessing. For more than four decades, containment of communism provided the overriding goal of American foreign policy, allowing generations of political leaders to build domestic consensus on this steady, reliable foundation. From Berlin to Baghdad incisively dissects the numerous unsuccessful attempts to devise a new grand foreign policy strategy that could match the moral clarity and political efficacy of containment. Brands takes a fresh look at the key events and players in recent American history. In the 1990s, George H. W. Bush envisioned the United States as the guardian of a "new world order," and the Clinton administration sought the "enlargement" of America's political and economic influence. However, both presidents eventually came to accept, albeit grudgingly, that America's multifaceted roles, responsibilities, and objectives could not be reduced to a single fundamental principle. During the early years of the George W. Bush administration, it appeared that the tragedies of 9/11 and the subsequent "war on terror" would provide the organizing principle lacking in U.S. foreign policy since the containment of communism became an outdated notion. For a time, most Americans were united in support of Bush's foreign policies and the military incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq. As the swift invasions became grinding occupations, however, popular support for Bush's policies waned, and the rubric of the war on terror lost much of its political and rhetorical cachet. From Berlin to Baghdad charts the often onerous course of recent American foreign policy, from the triumph of the fall of the Berlin Wall to the tragedies of 9/11 and beyond, analyzing the nation's search for purpose in the face of the daunting complexities of the post--Cold War world.