Here is a little taste of a most enjoyable read:

Madame Secretary

"It was a quarter to ten. I was sipping coffee, but by then my body was manufacturing its own caffeine. I still couldn't allow myself to believe. Finally, at 9:47, the call came. 'I want you to be my Secretary of State.' These are his first words. I finally believed it."

For eight years, during Bill Clinton's two presidential terms, Madeleine Albright was an active participant in the most dramatic events of recent times—from the pursuit of peace in the Middle East to NATO's humanitarian intervention in Kosovo. Now, in an outspoken memoir, the highest-ranking woman in American history shares her remarkable story and provides an insider's view of world affairs during a period of unprecedented turbulence.

The story begins with Albright's childhood as a Czechoslovak refugee, whose family first fled Hitler, then the Communists. Arriving in the United States at the age of eleven, she grew up to be a passionate advocate of civil and women's rights and followed a zigzag path to a career that ultimately placed her in the upper stratosphere of diplomacy and policy-making in her adopted country. She became the first woman to serve as America's secretary of state and one of the most admired individuals of our era.

Refreshingly candid, Madam Secretary brings to life the world leaders Albright dealt with face-to-face in her years of service and the battles she fought to prove her worth in a male-dominated arena. There are intriguing portraits of such leading figures as Vaclav Havel, Yasser Arafat, Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, King Hussein, Vladimir Putin, Slobodan Milosevic, and North Korea's mysterious Kim Jong-II, as well as Bill and Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell, and Jesse Helms.

Besides her encounters with the famous and powerful, we get to know Albright the private woman: her life raising three daughters, the painful breakup of her marriage to the scion of one of America's leading newspapers families, and the discovery late in life of her Jewish ancestry and that her grandparents had died in Nazi concentration camps.

Madam Secretary combines warm humor with profound insights and personal testament with fascinating additions to the historical record. It is a tapestry both intimate and panoramic, a rich memoir destined to become a twenty-first century classic.

*** From Madame Secretary by Madeline Albright

We all have our stories. This is mine. It reflects the turbulence of the past century, the expanding and changing roles of women, and the clash between those around the world with faith in freedom and those who place power above human values. Before sitting down to write, I read memoirs by other former Secretaries of State. The books were excellent but the approach their authors took did not seem right for me. I wanted to combine the personal with policy and describe not just what happened but also why and how events were influenced by human relationships. I also wanted to be sure the main character didn’t bore people to death.

Many lives progress in a more or less predictable path, like water through a well-marked channel. My journey has been different. The idea that a daughter of Czechoslovakia, born shortly before the outbreak of global war, would one day become America’s first woman Secretary of State once could not have been imagined. It was almost as inconceivable that someone who had not held a government job until she was thirty-nine years old and the mother of three would become the highest-ranking woman in American history. Well into adulthood, I was never supposed to be what I became.

But if I had a late start, I also hurried to catch up. I began as a public spirited volunteer, raising money for political candidates and various good causes, meeting new people, and steadily expanding my personal horizons while also obtaining a Ph.D. With my family’s support, I crossed the threshold into professional life, working in the Senate and White House, advising Democratic candidates for national office, heading a think tank, and teaching international relations. Year by year, I acquired essential knowledge, experience, and skills. Relatively few people had heard of me when President Clinton asked if I would serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 1992. By Washington standards I had had a stealth career, but I was ready. As Senator Barbara Mikulski, a trailblazer herself, said about the two of us, “We were twenty-five-year overnight successes.” Once in government, I had to deal with the problem of operating in a predominantly man’s world. The challenge was not new to me, but the level was higher and the pressures more intense. I am often asked whether I was condescended to by men as I traveled around the world to Arab countries and other places with highly traditional cultures. I replied, “No, because when I arrived somewhere, it was in a large plane with ‘United States of America’ emblazoned on the side.” Foreign officials respected that. I had more problems with some of the men in my own government.

Having completed college at the end of the 1950s, I was part of a generation of women who were still uncertain about whether they could be good wives and mothers and also achieve success in the workplace. From my graduation day until the graduation of my last child, I had to deal with the age-old problem of balancing the demands of family with academic and professional interests. As I began to climb the ladder, I had to cope with the different vocabularies used to describe similar qualities in men (confident, take-charge, committed) and women (bossy, aggressive, emotional). It took years, but over time I developed enough faith in my judgment to do my job in my own way and style, worrying at least a little less about what others thought.

I do think I was lucky to serve a President, Bill Clinton, who saw clearly America’s role as a unifying force in a world moving at warp speed from one era to another. The President believed, as did I, that our country’s purpose was not just to bear witness to history but rather to shape it in ways that served our interests and ideals. He also gave me the opportunity that no other individual, male or female, has had to serve full terms both as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and as U.S. Secretary of State. These were the most exciting jobs, and I had the chance to perform them at a time when the UN was newly empowered and, in fact, virtually every foreign policy institution, relationship, assumption, and doctrine was being reevaluated in light of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I loved being Secretary of State and could have written happily about everything that took place during my years of service. While in office, I was regularly criticized after a speech or congressional testimony for not discussing this or that issue or part of the globe. The problem is that there is not enough space—whether in a speech or in a book—to do justice to everything. I found in writing this memoir that literally hundreds of pages had to be chopped to keep the full text at a manageable size. So in covering my years in government, I have had to be extremely selective.

I regret what has been left out and mean no disrespect to the people and nations whose names do not appear within these pages. I will continue to write, telling other parts of the story along the way. This volume, then, is a personal account, not a history of the Clinton administration foreign policy or even a remotely comprehensive chronicle of world affairs at the end of the last century. It does, however, deal with the highlights, some involving issues that have continued to dominate the headlines since I left office, including terrorism, Iraq, the Middle East, and North Korea. The danger in writing such a book is that the world continues to change while the text has to be copy edited, printed, bound, and distributed—a process requiring months. The text of this volume was completed during the tumultuous spring of 2003. What has happened since is known to you—the reader—but not to me as I write. You have that advantage, and it will, I am sure, influence your reading of some of the key chapters that follow.

Lives are necessarily untidy and uneven, but there is a certain symmetry to the tale of my own. While for some people diplomacy and foreign policy are acquired interests, I had them in my blood. My father had been a diplomat and also a professor, and from childhood I was his most avid student.

Historical forces similar to those that shaped my personal destiny resurfaced during my years as a decision maker in government. When I was still a little girl, my family was driven from its home twice, first by Fascists, then by Communists. While in office I was able to fight against ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia, a country where I had lived as a child. For most of my life Communism divided Europe. I spent my academic life studying its effects. Once in office I was able to help the newly democratic nations of Central and East Europe, including the land of my birth, Czechoslovakia, become full partners of the free world. I could apply the lessons of my own experience to support the aspirations of women at work, at school, and in the home. I also strove to reform and revitalize the United Nations, an institution my father had served at a pivotal moment in our lives.

Most of all, having been witness at a very young age to what happens when America plays only a passive role in world affairs, I used my position to work closely with allies and friends on every continent to build a united front in support of liberty and in opposition to the forces of intolerance, unbridled ambition, and hate.

I have read many autobiographies and found the best to be the most honest. So, honest I have tried to be, even when it has been hard........