Friday, August 26, 2011

Condoleezza Rice memoir coming this fall

Los Angeles Times


Condoleezza Rice, secretary of State during President George W. Bush's second term, will publish a political memoir this fall with Crown.

The book, "No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington," is due Nov. 1, a little later than might be expected.

September will mark the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks during Bush's first term, when Rice was his national security advisor. In that role, Rice was a key player in the country's response to the attacks.

In a news release, Crown says that Rice's book "describes the harrowing terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and chronicles her experience of appearing before the 9/11 Commission, for which she was broadly saluted for her grace and forthrightness. She also reveals new details about the contentious debates in the lead-up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq."

But does publishing the book more than a month after the anniversary indicate that the stories Rice has to tell about her time in Washington won't be revelatory?

Other important issues that Rice confronted in Washington that might be addressed in "No Higher Honor": the fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and America's use of torture in interrogations.

Before entering the administration, Rice was provost at Stanford. She had previously served under President George H.W. Bush in the National Security Council.

"No Higher Honor" is Rice's first memoir of her life in politics; she is also the author of "Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family," which was a bestseller.

She is an accomplished pianist and has appeared, as herself, on television's "30 Rock."

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