Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power

by Marcus Mabry

Book Overview

Who is Condoleezza Rice? Award-winning "Newsweek "editor Marcus Mabry explores the contradictions personal and public of one of the most influential, controversial, and fascinating women in the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1594863628
• ISBN13: 9781594863622
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Rodale Books
• Length: 362 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 7.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating Biography but Very Biased

My immediate impression of this book was the extreme bias of the author, an impression that increased as I continued reading. Mabry is almost never invisible here, and his personal political voice and attempts to psychoanalyze Condoleezza Rice are intrusive to an otherwise fantastic biography. The personal stories of Rice's roots and childhood, the fantastic collection of photos, and the description of Jim Crow Birmingham make it well worth the effort of wading through the writer's commentary. I laughed out loud at some of the stories of Rice's childhood, and I cried at the story of the church bombing. I enjoyed reading her speeches and her personal quotes. I enjoyed reading of her years of education and her "path to power." I felt I knew her. This book had the potential to be a five-star publication had it stuck to the biography genre, with an invisible author. Excellent personal interviews, excellent research, and excellent story-telling. But as a reader I want to make my own interpretations. Just tell me the story.

Marcus Mabry does not disappoint

Allow me to preface and say that I'm not a fan of biographies for several reasons: boring, innacurate, bias, incomplete, etc....but Marcus Mabry has done his homework and then some. Should you read this, you won't regret it and you'll walk away informed and armed with enough resources to keep any poli sci buff occupied for months (of which I AM NOT) . I'm a Republican that voted for Obama, so don't box me in and try to refrain from assumptions. I felt Mr. Mabry was unbiased, factual, and one heck of a writer ....looking forward to his next book. And BTW, this is a biography about Condoleeza Rice, not George W. Bush, not politics, and not a college course on political science - so to the reviewers that rated the book based on something for which this was book NOT intended, please think about the title of Mabry's book and the definition of biography. :)

EXCELLENT AND THOROUGHLY RESEARCHED

This is the first time I have ever reviewed a book. I felt compelled to compliment Mr. Mabry on the thorough research he so painstakingly did for this book. The book is easy to read and it keeps the reader interested in the subject without getting bogged down in minutiae.

A Treatise on Dr. Condoleezza Rice-Secretary of State

The author describes the life and times of Dr. Condoleezza Rice with both personal stories and historical events. Many of the childhood personal stories and recitations are quite moving. For instance, the Secretary's assimilation into Stanford University was discussed . The historic contention between the State and Defense Departments was highlighted. This inter-agency competition may limit the Secretary's options-particularly during times of war. A strength of the work highlights areas where the organizational design of the cabinet itself could be reconfigured or enhanced to benefit future presidencies. Several great crises presented early in the current Administration. For instance, Hurricane Katrina left thousands homeless in the USA. The Asian Tsunami left thousands dead with billions of dollars in property claims. The aftermath of terrorist attacks in New York City cost many lives and displaced people and businesses . Sunni insurgents destroyed the Golden Dome of the Askariya Mosque- one of the holiest places of Sh'ia Islam. The Hezbollah kidnapped an Israeli soldier and the Hamas prevailed in open elections to become a voting majority. Add to this the current Iraqi difficulties in coordinating internal security with an iterative withdrawal of the United States at some future time. The current fear centers around control of Baghdad when the United States leaves or withdraws to a position outside of the daily skirmishes between the Sunni, Sh'ia and protagonists outside of Iraq. The peacekeeping forces (whether American, Iraqi, United Nations or a combination of the above) in Iraq must manage historic contentions between warring factions while hoping that the conflict does not spill over into neighboring countries like Turkey or Iran. There have been significant border clashes between the Turks and the Kurds, as well as Iranian involvement in the conflict. The challenges ahead deal with the role of the United States in the region, as well as the transitioning of the American peacekeeping forces to Iraqi security forces and possibly United Nations forces for the long term. The long term vision involves the mix of security forces. Preferably, these forces will be Iraqi with a permanent contingent of United Nations forces concurrent with an iterative phasing out of U.S.A. involvement over a rational time horizon. The work could deal in more detail with the future role of the United States in Iraq and the Secretary's current work to re-shape that role. To obtain a verifiable ceasefire, the Sunni, Sh'ia, Kurds and mixed communities must come to believe that they could lead a better life in a loosely knit governance with a fair economic resource-sharing arrangement. Right now, these parties have not internalized this goal. And so, they are jockeying to gain the upper hand. This process will continue until the Iraqi security apparatus develops with some assistance (preferably) from the United Nations Peacekeeping forces. If the country eve

An Exceptional Biography About A Complex Political Figure

It has always seemed to me that writing a biography about a living person is fraught with intellectual risk and potential embarrassment. After all, living human beings are never static and one can well imagine that on the very day a particular biography is published, the subject of the work has undergone a recent metamorphoses and is no longer the person written about. (By the way, I admit to having the same fear about making statements which I deem to be "absolutely certain"; I just know that if I absolutely deny the existence of unicorns, one will show up in my backyard the next day!) Anyway, I have to admire Marcus Mabry's willingness to tackle a biography of Condoleezza Rice. She is still alive and well and, moreover, holds a very controversial political position in very controversial times. Not only is Rice one of the most powerful public figures in the world; she is also a Republican, more or less politically "conservative," a person of the female gender and, most notably I think, a person of "color" -- a Black leader in a predominately White establishment. She is, in fact, the first Black woman to hold an office as high as U.S. secretary of state. No mean feat, that. There are two important points that need to be emphasized at the outset. First, this is the first biography of Rice to be written since she assumed her role as U.S. secretary of state. Second, it is apparently the first biography with which she has cooperated and, also apparently, without putting any editorial restrictions on the author. As far as I can judge -- admittedly from a distance -- Mabry is as "fair and balanced" (as the popular saying goes) as can be expected. I found no particular "agenda" on his part nor any specific bias in dealing with the subject at hand. I am well aware that it is suspected that mainstream journalists are "modernist liberal" in their orientation and critical of political conservatives and Republicans, but I found no obvious attempt on Mabry's part to skew his writing negatively toward Rice's political views, even though he does now and then critique them. But rational critique is fair play and, for that matter, there are many points upon which I disagree with Rice and especially her boss, the current president of the United States. The heart of Mabry's book, as far as I am concerned, is not his presentation of Rice's evolution as a political and academic luminary, which she surely became, but his telling about her upbringing, her childhood, her family, her early relationships, and so on. One can only admire Rice's mother, Angelena, and her father, Rev. John Rice, who planted the first aspirations in their daughter to rise above the circumstances in which she was born and raised, which was, of course, the American deep South where to be Black was to be not only endangered, but to be considered less than a full member of the human community. She was encouraged by her parents to dismiss the thought that she was a lesser person than Whites sim