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In winding up her far-ranging autobiography, Madeleine Albright tells us with amusement that once, after leaving office as U.S. Secretary of State, she was mistaken in public for Margaret Thatcher. They both reached the highest rank ever attained by a woman in their respective democratic governments. Were fiercely partisan political figures, and held very strong opinions and were never afraid to battle for them.
Albright is best known for serving as U.S. ambassador to the UN in the first Clinton term, and as Secretary of State in the second. The other thing about Albright that most people will recall is that only after she became Secretary of State did she learn that her family ancestry was Jewish --- that three of her grandparents had died in Nazi concentration camps.
Her life, though unsettled due to wartime exigencies, was not a rags-to-riches tale. She was born Marie Jana Korbel in Prague into a comfortably situated family. Her father was a respected Czech diplomat and college professor. Fleeing the Nazis, the family spent time in England during World War II. They arrived in the United States when she was 11, and her father took a teaching job in Denver. She entered Wellesley College in 1955 and became an American citizen two years later. She married into a wealthy and well-connected American family in 1959. Her first political idol and mentor was Edmund Muskie, in whose doomed presidential campaign she took part. After the breakup of her marriage, her career in government and politics took off during the Carter presidency, her only personal setback being a painful divorce in 1983. ~reviewed by Robert Finn
Madame Albright Quotes
"All women kind of feel that every day they have to do a superior job."
"Because in some way or another, by somebody, I am reminded of the fact that I'm a woman in a man's world.”
"I like being a woman and I figure I use everything I have.”
"I'm pretty spontaneous. And I think it's taken me 63 years, but I know who I am."
"I literally have, sometimes, this out of body experience, just thinking, well Madeleine Albright is a person," Albright says, "who is secretary of state."
"And then there is the person who comes home from work, ...and nobody would believe this but I go and I put on my flannel nightgown, have cottage cheese, and go and watch television. And that's Madeleine."
"I love makeup and I need it tonight...because I just got off the plane.”
