Madam Minister: The Personal Story of the Most Powerful Woman in America

It was a quarter to ten. I sipped my coffee, but my body was already producing its own caffeine. I still wouldn't let myself believe it. Finally, at 9:47, the phone call came. "I want you to be my secretary of state." Those were his first words. I could finally believe it. During Bill Clinton's two terms, Madeleine Albright was deeply involved in some of the most dramatic events in recent history—from the quest for peace in the Middle East to NATO's humanitarian intervention in Kosovo. In this candid memoir, the most senior woman in American history tells her remarkable story and provides a behind-the-scenes look at world politics during a time of unprecedented turbulence. The story begins with Albright's childhood as a Czechoslovakian fleeing Hitler and then the communists with her family. At the age of eleven, she came to the United States, where she grew up to be a passionate defender of civil and women's rights and followed a varied career that eventually brought her to the highest echelons of politics and diplomacy. Madam Secretary is remarkably candid. Albright writes in a colorful way about the world leaders she encountered during those years and about the battles she had to fight to survive in a male-dominated world. The book offers fascinating portraits of leaders such as Václav Havel, Yasser Arafat, Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, King Hussein, Vladimir Putin, Slobodan Milošević and the mysterious North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, as well as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Jesse Helms and Colin Powell. In addition to her encounters with the great and famous of the world, we also read all about Albright's turbulent private life: raising her three daughters alone, the painful divorce from a scion of one of the wealthiest American newspaper families, the discovery she made later in life that she was descended from Jewish grandparents who died in the Nazi concentration camps. Madam Minister is a personal testament full of fascinating additions to historiography, in which humor and profound insights go hand in hand. It is a comprehensive and at the same time intimate autobiography that will undoubtedly become one of the classics of the twenty-first century. Madeleine Albright was born in Prague and in 1997 appointed the sixty-fourth Secretary of State of the United States of America. In addition, she was a member of the National Security Council and ambassador for the US to the United Nations. She lives in Washington DC and Virginia, Bill Woodward specializes in foreign policy and was an advisor and speechwriter for Secretary Albright and Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis. He lives on Capitol Hill with his wife and daughter. www.amboanthos.nl