Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power

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 history of American politics.

Before becoming the first female African-American secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice was the first woman to be named national security advisor to the president of the United States and, before that, the first woman, first minority, and youngest person to be named provost of Stanford University. Yet for all her ceiling-shattering accomplishments, Rice remains enigmatic. Mabry’s penetrating, multilayered study of Rice is the most comprehensive portrait ever reported of this powerful woman. It was an editor's choice of The New York Times' Book Review.

Perhaps no American leader is better known and less understood than Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Beyond the dramatic story of the past--her ascent from segregated Alabama to the halls of power--and the controversy of her present, little is known about her as a woman, and while she has broken barriers and achieved extraordinary success, she is also one of the most polarizing figures of our time. Rice embodies xontradiction. As an African American girl growing up in the South when the civil rights movement was at its most tumultuous and inspiring, her own views on race are complex. While she has benefited from advances in civil rights legislation and evolving acceptance of blacks, hers has been a singularly individualistic rise, the product of her parents; determination to make her "special."

Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power is the first biography of Rice to reveal the private woman behind the public image. Bringing his superlative skills as a journalist to bear on this most intriguing of subjects, Newsweek chief of correspondents Marcus Mabry chronicles the fascinating story of Rice's life so far: from her childhood in Alabama and Colorado--where she loved ice skating and playing the piano--to her discovery of international affairs at the knee of Madeleine Albright's father, Josef Korbel, to her role in taking America to war in Iraq. What drove her to the fateful decisions that the United States and the world are now living with? How will history judge her and what awaits her after her service to George W. Bush? Mabry answers these questions om a deeply nuanced portrait of a driven woman of many contradictions whose power is vast--and still growing.

The New York Times - Jonathan Freedland

Twice as Good, by Marcus Mabry, the chief of correspondents for Newsweek, works hard to solve the Rice puzzle. It digs deep into the story of her family, including her slave ancestors, and the hugely influential figure of her father, the Rev. John Rice. We follow the family s journey from segregation in Alabama to educational opportunity in Colorado and finally to California. We learn much with a detail uncommon in a political biography of her almost frighteningly intense childhood.

A veteran foreign correspondent and editor, Marcus Mabry is chief of correspondents for Newsweek, overseeing the magazine's domestic and international bureaus. The winner of numerous journalism awards, Mabry is also a former Edward R. Murrow Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the memoir White Bucks and Blackeyed Peas: Coming of Age Black in White America. He graduated from Stanford University and studied at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques-Paris. His work has appeared in Foreign Affairs and The New Republic, among many other publications, and he is a frequent commentator on CNN, MSNBC and the BBC's French-language service. He is chairman of The Albert G. Oliver Program in New York, which sends bright minority students to private schools and a governor of the Overseas Press Club. He lives in New York with his partner.