Madeleine Albright : a twentieth-century odyssey /

This intriguing biography of Madeleine Albright by Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs draws on extensive familiarity with Eastern Europe. Albright, a Czech immigrant, is the first woman to rise to the nation's highest appointed office. Albright's strengths are dogged determination, charm, and outstanding communication skills. Intelligent yet insecure, generous but vindictive, better at articulation than bureaucratic infighting, Albright suffers from contradictory qualities. In the image of her diplomat-scholar father, she stakes out moral positions without following through. Her father, former dean of Denver University's Graduate School of International Studies, had qualities Madeleine shares. He was more clever than courageous. Fleeing communist regimes in which he had served, he came to the US by way of London and Belgrade and claimed to be "non-confessional" when questioned about his religion. Dobbs is persuaded that Madeleine and her parents knew they were Jewish but denied it. Others in the extended family died at Auschwitz. Their children's letters went unanswered. Even at her confirmation, Madeleine denied knowing about her relatives until the evidence became incontrovertible. Dobbs connects Joseph and Madeleine's denial with the manner in which they handled their assignments. Recognizing her resolve and many talents, he believes she will fall short of becoming one of the great secretaries of state. All levels. K. W. Thompson; University of Virginia

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

Not long after she was sworn in as the first female American secretary of state, Albright, a Czech immigrant, was the subject of a Washington Post Magazine article that revealed to the worldÄand, Albright has maintained, to herselfÄthat she is the daughter of Jews who converted to Catholicism before WWII. Dobbs, the author of that article, stretches his scoop into a full-length biography that focuses more on the personal than on the political. Dobbs doesn't believe Albright's claim that she didn't know about her Jewish heritage, writing that "there are simply too many contradictions and inconsistencies in her story for it to be believable." But he doesn't really fault her for her alleged evasionÄat least not strongly. Instead, Dobbs takes Albright's roots as a cue to tell a great story animated by the very American themes of outstanding achievement and the reinvention of the self. As he pursues these themes, Dobbs takes readers back to mid-century Prague, where Albright's father pursued a diplomatic career (and studiously concealed his Jewish roots). He meticulously traces the travails of her relatives under Nazi and Stalinist rule before moving on to Albright's student days at Wellesley, her marriage to Joe Albright, the scion of a WASP newspaper dynasty and, after their divorce, her creation of herself as a big-time player in American politics and diplomacy. Dobbs's concluding comparison of Albright and Jay Gatsby, while hammering home the theme of self-invention, doesn't take into account the quality of the self being invented. Yet, on the whole, this is a balanced and fairly sympathetic narrative of a remarkable American life. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Dobbs, former Moscow bureau chief and now diplomatic reporter for the Washington Post, first broke the story of Secretary of State Madeleine Albrights Jewish family. Here he traces the descendants of her great-grandfather Josef Korbel for five generations, detailing those who died in the Holocaust and those who fled to other corners of the globe. Several of Albrights ancestors rose above their origins through a combination of hard work and striving to please superiors; Dobbs finds the same pattern throughout Albrights career. She has displayed a long history of making her own opportunities to advance. Dobbs devotes considerable attention to Albrights development of networking skills, her political campaign and fundraising work, and her previous jobs in the executive branch. The coverage of her Clinton-administration positions as U.N. ambassador and now secretary of state are, however, sketchy. This popular treatment nevertheless does a good job of presenting Albrights many accomplishments. Popular and current events collections will want it.Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

An unvarnished look into the personal and public life of Madeleine Albright, from a George Polk Award'winning reporter for the Washington Post. The first female secretary of state has been targeted by multiple biographers, with a discernible trend toward more lengthy, detailed, and critical accounts of her life. Dobbs (Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Union, 1997) remains fairly even-handed in his assessment, but if the trend holds, Albright will not enjoy future efforts. The reporter who broke the story about Albright's family background at the time of her appointment to State, Dobbs leaves no stone unturned regarding her familial heritage, including the apparent efforts by her parents to distance themselves from their Jewishness to facilitate becoming American. He draws the blunt conclusion that Albright must have known more about this than she has admitted and suggests that the central motivation throughout her life'to be accepted by others'replicates the earlier motives of her parents. She manifests this desire to fit in through handling people effectively, stroking them where needed, maintaining lines of communication, and adjusting to the whims of others. Along with her sheer persistence in pursuing goals, these social abilities are Albright's strengths. She climbed ``to the top of America's male-dominated society . . . by insinuating herself into its ranks and adapting herself,'' not through brilliance or originality. The public perceives her as outspoken and aggressive'she describes herself as a child of Munich, not Vietnam'compared to the recent norm of bland diplomats and timid soldiers. For Dobbs this image ``contains a kernel of truth . . . [but] is ultimately misleading. In reality, her urge to tell it 'like it is' has been tempered by a competing urge to please a succession of powerful, predominantly male, patrons.'' Albright combines conviction and conformity, but Dobbs attributes her success to the latter. Albright watchers can now wonder if her convictions will increasingly emerge and whether she will continue to receive her accustomed plaudits if they do. (b&w photos)