Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey: Amazon.de: Michael Dobbs: Englische Bücher

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This compelling, well-reported biography tells the story of Madeleine Albright, the first woman secretary of state--therefore the highest-ranking female official--in U.S. history. Its author, Michael Dobbs, was the Washington Post reporter who first uncovered Albright's Jewish heritage, which had been kept from her by her Czech immigrant parents, who fled to the U.S. when Madeleine was 11 years old. Her father, Joseph Korbel, was a diplomat serving in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, when World War II began. The Korbels managed to escape to England, but more than two dozen of her relatives (including three grandparents) died at the hands of the Nazis. Madeleine and her family were baptized as Catholics in England, and her parents never told her about her Jewish heritage or the circumstances of her grandparents' deaths.

Most of the book deals with Madeleine's life in the United States and the building of her career: member of the Wellesley College class of '59; marriage and then divorce from Joseph Medill Patterson Albright; her Ph.D. from Columbia, followed by jobs with Ed Muskie's senate office and Zbigniew Brzezinski at the National Security Council; the national campaigns of Geraldine Ferraro and Michael Dukakis; the 1993 appointment as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "Madeleine was attracted to power as a swan is attracted to water," writes Dobbs. Her house in Georgetown, only a few blocks from the residences of Katherine Graham and Pamela Harriman, became a foreign-policy salon.

Albright has more star power than any secretary of state since Henry Kissinger, and she can take credit for increasing public interest and awareness of foreign affairs. Her personality is a "contradictory mix of insecurity and assertiveness, vulnerability and determination, pleasantness and steeliness," Dobbs writes. "Madeleine's life may have been a 'fairy tale,' in her phrase, but it was a fairy tale of her own making." At the heart of his assessment of her life is the secret of her family's past and how it drove her need for success as well as her views on foreign policy. Albright herself admits the seminal event affecting all of her views about foreign policy was the West's initial appeasement of Hitler and his takeover of her native Prague. "I saw," she once said, "what happened when a dictator was allowed to take over a piece of a country and the country went down the tubes. And I saw the opposite during the war when America joined the fight." Such feelings are essential background in understanding Albright's role in shaping American policy toward foreign intervention, particulary in Eastern Europe. --Linda Killian -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

From Booklist

It was perhaps inevitable that Dobbs, the Washington Post reporter who broke the story of Albright's Jewish lineage in 1997, would expand that narrow (though news-making) aspect of the secretary of state's life to a full biography. Albright and her staff adopted what State Department spokesperson Jamie Rubin called a policy of "limited cooperation," giving Dobbs access to much but not all the information he sought. The result is a generally readable and informative biography that views the secretary's life in terms of both the classic immigrant as survivor and "the great events of the century," from the economic and political movements that sundered her European homeland to the rise of the U.S. to world power and the women's movement. (One oddity: Dobbs may be on firm ground in identifying his subject as "Madeleine" when discussing her childhood, education, or divorce, but in her role as secretary of state he should refer to the her as "Albright.") If one needed proof of the challenges the first woman to serve in this senior Cabinet position faced, Dobbs has provided it. Mary Carroll -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

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An Excellent Book 14. Juli 2000

Von Courtney L. Lewis

Format:Gebundene Ausgabe

Dobbs has produced an amazing piece of research and journalism. Practically half the book is devoted to a meticulous charting of Madeleine's parents, the Korbels, and their narrow escape from the Holocaust and later the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia. Following them to America, Dobbs shows how Madeliene's drive and natural intelligence lead her to assimilate seamlessly into American culture and graduate from Wellesley College. I think the author also does an excellent job charting the conflicts for women of this period and demonstrates how Albright succeeds in constantly acquiring new skills and a network of influential friends and colleagues during a time when she could have been simply a "supportive housewife". His insider look at her political career in New York and Washington is fascinating and very informative.

Perhaps Dobbs deserves to be best congratulated on developing a three-dimensional picture of a complex woman - no saint but instead a powerful human figure in our time.

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A different slant on the Holocaust which is a "must read". 21. Juli 1999

Von Ein Kunde

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! 13. Mai 1999

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.