cover image Seasons of Her Life: A Biography of Madeleine Korbel Albright

Seasons of Her Life: A Biography of Madeleine Korbel Albright

Ann Blackman. Scribner Book Company, $27 (400pp) ISBN 978-0-684-84564-7

In the first biography of America's only female secretary of state, Blackman (Washington reporter for Time magazine) not only tells the life of a Czech refugee who becomes the highest-ranking woman in the U.S. government, but also weaves together three distinct subjects: the turbulent history of Czechoslovakia, the effect of the feminist movement on women of Albright's generation and the foreign policy process in the Carter and Clinton administrations. The daughter of a Czech diplomat, young Madeleine twice fled her native Prague, after the German invasion of 1939 and the Communist coup of 1948. Albright quickly adjusted to her new home in the U.S., graduating from Wellesley in 1959 and marrying publishing heir Joseph Albright. A wife and mother, Albright was also an academic and a ""Washington lady,"" serving on boards and hosting dinner parties. After she made a name for herself as the U.S.'s plainspoken, media-savvy ambassador to the UN, Clinton appointed her as secretary of state. If her historic appointment was marred by the controversy over the revelation of her family's Jewish origin--a subject thoroughly vetted by Blackman--she remains one of the most compelling figures in the Clinton administration. Albright herself gave one interview to the author, while many of her friends and associates cooperated as well. Blackman is a skillful reporter who has written a solid, balanced biography. Her subject emerges as strong and determined, if somewhat obsessed with her public image. (Nov.)