CONDOLEEZZA RICE’S NO HIGHER HONOR: A MEMOIR OF MY YEARS IN WASHINGTON, TO BE PUBLISHED ON NOVEMBER 1, 2011 BY CROWN

— Publisher Unveils Book Jacket — 

New York, NY (August 25, 2011) — No Higher Honor by Condoleezza Rice will be published on November 1, 2011, by Crown Publishers. The No Higher Honor memoir is a vivid and forthright account of Rice’s experiences as U.S. National Security Advisor and Secretary of State during the administration of President George W. Bush.

The book will be released simultaneously in the U.S. and Canada in hardcover, e-book, and audio formats. No Higher Honor will also be issued in the United Kingdom by Simon & Schuster UK.

From 2001 through 2004, Rice served as the nation’s first female National Security Advisor, a role that deepened her bond with President Bush and ultimately made her one of his closest confidantes.  In 2005, she was confirmed as the 66^th U.S. Secretary of State and entrusted with shaping and carrying forward the President’s foreign policy. As America’s chief diplomat, Rice traveled almost continuously around the globe seeking common ground among friends, allies and sometimes bitter enemies, forging international agreements on divisive issues, and compiling a remarkable record of achievement.

In No Higher Honor, Rice shares her unique perspective on the most consequential political, diplomatic, and security issues of the administration. In her own words, she describes the harrowing terrorist attacks of September 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.

Offering keen insight into how history actually proceeds, No Higher Honor reveals the behind-the-scenes maneuvers that kept the world’s relationships with Iran, North Korea, and Libya from collapsing into chaos. The book also takes the reader into secret negotiating rooms where the fates of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Lebanon often hung in the balance, and draws back the curtain on how frighteningly close all-out war loomed in clashes involving India and Pakistan, Russia and Georgia, and in East Africa.

Surprisingly candid in her narrative of Administration colleagues, as well as the hundreds of foreign leaders with whom she dealt, Rice offers in No Higher Honor a master class in statecraft and diplomacy in a way that reveals her essential warmth and humility, and her deep reverence for the ideals on which America was founded.  No Higher Honor will be, undoubtedly, an important contribution to the historical record of the United States.

Rice’s previous memoir Extraordinary, Ordinary People:  A Memoir of Family, an account of her upbringing in segregation-era Birmingham, Alabama, and of the lasting influence her parents had on her life, was published by Crown in October 2010, and appeared on the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Denver Post bestseller lists. The trade paperback edition of Extraordinary, Ordinary People is scheduled to be released by Three Rivers Press on October 11, 2011.

Crown Publishers is an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., whose parent company is Bertelsmann AG. 

#          #          #

Permalink: Press Release: No Higher Honor by Condoleezza Rice