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Condi: The Condoleezza Rice story by Antonia Felix

A little girl from Birmingham, Alabama, on a trip with her parents to Washington DC, turns to her father before the gates of the White House and says these words:

"Daddy, I'm barred out of there now because of the color of my skin. But one day, I'll be in that house."

The little girl was 10 and those words were spoken by Condoleezza Rice.

Antonia Felix has written a very thoroughly researched and readable biography of America's newest Secretary of State. The story starts in 1954 in the segregated south. Condoleezza was only nine when the four little girls were killed in the dynamite attack on the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. She was in her church, and only a few miles away. It is the story of loving and protective parents that gave everything they had and they were to their only child. She had piano lessons, ballet lessons, French and Spanish lessons; books appeared constantly on her nightstand for her to read. Her parents, both college graduates, knew education was the key to success. They also knew that a black child would have to excel, not be "twice as good," but maybe be "three times as good," to compete with white students outside the segregated south. They did all they knew how to do to prepare their child to survive.

Condoleezza flourished. The story of her life will entertain and inspire you. And the author does a superb job of telling her story. Every time you want to know more, she fills in the details right there on the pages of the book. It is like having a conversation with her, as if she anticipates your questions and answers them.

I highly recommend this book. And it is not all study and hard work. Condoleezza Rice seriously knows and loves football. She watches the sport in 12-hour television marathons and has dated professional football players. I was glad to learn more about this serious, smart, religious, graceful, and vivacious person. I'm sure you will, too.

This is my stock review for the other blogs.
I really wanted to know more about Condoleezza Rice, knew absolutely nothing, because she was/is such a key player in Bush's administration. Very interesting and I was especially taken with how her views of the military morphed after the "first phase" of the present Iraq war was at an end. I had to return the book to the ILN, but I wish I had saved her views of the use of the military "then" and now. Definitely not nation-builders. I wonder what forces changed her mind. I believe, as we can see, that policy in Iraq is definitely failing. I am so tired of the rhetorical mumbo-jumbo coming out of the principles in the administration. They must think the American people are incredibly stupid. They do put on a much better show before the Senate and the House of ...

I'll try to piece this all together, issue by issue. Hence the previous post about Islam and Iraq.