cover image Madeleine Albright

Madeleine Albright

. Henry Holt & Company, $27.5 (320pp) ISBN 978-0-8050-5659-4

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 world--and, Albright has maintained, to herself--that 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 evasion--at 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.)