Description:
The commencement speaker at Madeleine Albright's 1959 graduation from Wellesley College told the women at this prestigious East Coast school that their sterling education would serve them well. They were, said then Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy, "given the ideal preparation to serve at the very heart of the home." But the daughter of Czechoslovakian parents, whose diplomat father moved them to the U.S. when his country fell under Soviet control, was far too intellectually ambitious to be sent into domestic exile. Seasoned Time political reporter Ann Blackman's biography describes how Albright moved past the expectations of her time--and the challenges of being an immigrant--to become the highest-ranking woman in the history of U.S. politics when Bill Clinton picked her to be his second secretary of state. Through a peripatetic childhood, marriage and divorce, and the increasing demands of her work as a Ph.D. candidate, professor, and United States ambassador to the United Nations, Albright is revealed to be driven and demanding, a savvy diplomat who has forged relationships with world leaders and with a small, sustaining group of powerful American women. Extensively researched and enlivened by anecdote, Seasons of Her Life is a fascinating study of a very unusual and dynamic woman's rise to power. --Maria Dolan
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