Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey

by Michael Dobbs and Michael Dobbs

Book Overview

Since becoming secretary of state in 1997, Madeleine Albright has emerged as one of the most forceful voices in the Clinton administration and the chief architect of American foreign policy in the Balkans. As Michael Dobbs makes clear in this timely and important book, it's impossible to understand Albright without an appreciation of the tumultuous events that have shaped her life, and he traces Albright's progress from a European ghetto to the corridors...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805056602
• ISBN13: 9780805056600
• Release Date: March 2000
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Highly informative and laced with history

Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth Century Odyssey was a joy to read. It was well-written, in precise, easyily read prose. The research job was obviously fantastic, as Dobbs uncovered facts that even Madeleine was at least at one time unaware of. This history of Madeleine Albright's life is detailed and amazing. She is truly a person to be admired. Her history is laced unremovably with the history of the countries she lived in. Her native Czeckoslovkia underwent Hitler, the rise and fall of Communism, and later the dis-integration of the country into the Czeck Republic and Slovakia. Her political views were shaped by Munich and the appeasement, by the consequences of inaction rather than by the consequences of action, such as the Vietnam War, the one event which primarily shaped the foriegn-policy views of her colleagues. Her father delivered her and her immediate family from Hitler, as they were Jewish. Much of the rest of her family perished in the death camps. The Albrights moved to the United States and converted to Catholicism as a protective measure. Madeleine was drived by an incredible urge to assimilate, to please, and to succeed. Sometimes, these instincts came into conflict with one another. Dr. Albright is an amazing woman. I have seen her speak at a college in my area about terrorism and about the effects of September 11, and the myth of a bipolar world. She talked about women's rights and about the Balkans War. She said that "a country that lives only for itself is like a person that lives only fo himself." This defines her foreign policy image. I highly recommend this book, both for its research and for its subject matter.

A different slant on the Holocaust which is a "must read".

This is a fascinating book which covers the Holocaust through one family's silence and nominal conversion to Catholicism to survive. Certainly it presents the Holocaust in a different light than usual. The tale of a refugee female's attainment of the post of Sec. of State is riveting. Even the analysis of Albright's divorce explains one of the tragedies of twentieth century life. The book is subtitled a twentieth-century odyssey and that is what it is. Read it!

Exceptional and fascinating- a great reading group book!

What a fabulous book! I couldn't put it down. Having read this book, I have a new appreciation for Madeleine Albright as a woman who raised her children and then started a career which took her to the top. Dobbs is deeply sensitive to this, and you get the feeling that even as she climbs the ladder to her ultimate success, she wonders whether she is up to the job that lies ahead. Don't we women all have this experience at one time or another, even as we stop what we are doing to raise our children? Dobbs seems to have presented Albright with the only family tree she has even seen. He found branches of her family she never knew existed. The tragedy which befell her family in the Holocaust is not in vain - at the end of a century which molded and shaped her family, she has found them all again. A riveting story and it's beautifully written - I highly recommend this book.

Superb!

Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth Century Odyssey is a wonderful read. It is packed with new material about Madeleine Albright and insights into her life, beginning with a painfully vivid reconstruction of the deaths of many of her family members in the Holocaust. It shows how Albright has drawn on the drive and resourcefulness of her ancestors in Central Europe to make it to the top in America. The Blackman book, to which the previous reviewer refers, pales by comparison. Dobbs has interviewed many more people than his competitor, and his research is much more thorough. If you only have time for one Albright book, make it this one!

Fascinating and masterfully written

Michael Dobbs is the journalist who broke the story of Madeleine Albright's Jewish roots: his new book on America's first female Secretary of State is fascinating and masterfully written - THE book on how a Czech refugee girl made it to become the most powerful woman in the U.S. government. Dobbs has done a great deal of legwork, uncovering a number of new and revealing facts about Albright's past and her role model father.Based on his extensive research Dobbs now argues that Albright almost certainly knew she was from a Jewish family - many of whom perished in the Holocaust - well before she has said that she did. Like many immigrants from Europe, Joseph Korbel, her father, wanted to put a fire wall between the tragic past and his new identity in the West. He instilled that drive for a new identity in his ambitious daughter, Dobbs says, and it propelled her to the top.In light of the current Kosovo situation, with Albanian refugees fleeing their homeland in a harkening back to WWII, this first-rate book is mandatory reading for anyone who wants to understand the mind set of the Secretary of State and why we are involved in Kosovo.