Book News
Rice to write memoirs.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has agreed to a three-book deal with Crown Publishers, starting with a memoir about her years in the administration of President George W. Bush.
“Rice will combine candid narrative and acute analysis to tell the story of her time in the White House and as America’s top diplomat, and her role in protecting American security and shaping foreign policy during the extraordinary period from 2001-2009,” according to a statement from Crown. The book is planned for 2011.
The deal is worth at least $2.5 million, officials said.
Rice, 54, also will write a memoir about her family, scheduled for 2012, and a young-adult edition of her family book that will come out at the same time. None of the works is titled.
A foreign policy adviser for President George H.W. Bush, Rice served as national security adviser and secretary of state under the second Bush. Although criticized as unduly loyal to the president and some of his policies, including the Iraq War, she is still regarded among publishers as more likable and less ideological than Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials.
She is also seen as having an interesting personal history, rising from a segregated community in Birmingham, Ala., to become provost of Stanford University and eventually the first black woman to be secretary of state.
Associated Press
First Lines
Pictures at an Exhibition, by Sara Houghteling, $24.95.
In the twilight of my life, I began to question if my childhood was a time of almost absurd languor, or if the violence that would strike us later had lurked there all along. I revisited certain of these memories, determined to find the hidden vein of savagery within them: the sticky hand, the scattered nuts, the gap-toothed girl grasping a firecracker, a cap floating on the Seine, flayed legs swinging between a pair of crutches, the tailor and his mouthful of pins. Some of these were immediately ominous, while others only later revealed themselves as such. However, whether or not another boy living my life would agree, I cannot say.
Children’s picture book best sellers
1. Gallop!, by Rufus Butler Seder
2. Swing!, by Rufus Butler Seder
3. Listen to the Wind, by Greg Mortenson and Susan L. Roth; illustrated by Susan L. Roth
4. Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope, by Nikki Grimes; illustrated by Bryan Collier
5. The House in the Night, by Susan Marie Swanson; illustrated by Beth Krommes
6. Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed, by Mo Willems
7. Change Has Come, words by Barack Obama; illustrated by Kadir Nelson
8. Bee and Me, by Elle J. Mcguinness; illustrated by Heather Brown
9. Wabi Sabi, by Mark Reibstein; illustrated by Ed Young
10. Big Words for Little People, by Jamie Lee Curtis; illustrated by Laura Cornell
Publishers Weekly
