Extraordinary, Ordinary People; A Memoir of Family

viii, [2], 342 pages. Includes Author's Note, A Note on Sources, Acknowledgments, and Index. Chapters cover Starting Early; The Rays and the Rices; Married at Last; "Johnny, It's a Girl!' "I Need a Piano'': My Parents Were Teachers; Something in the Water; School Days; Summer Respite; Turning Up the Heat in Birmingham; 1963; Integration?; Tuscaloosa; Denver Again; Leaving the South Behind; Cancers Intrudes; Starting Early (Again); College Years; A Change of Direction; "Rally, Sons (and Daughters) of Notre Dame"; A New Start; A Lost Year; Senator Stanford's Farm; My Rookie Season; The Darkest Moment of My Life; "The Moving Van Is Here"; Inside the Pentagon; Back to Stanford; D.C. Again; "I Don't Think This Is What Karl Marx Had in Mind"; Back in California; Learning Compassion; Finding a New President for Stanford; Provost of the University; Tough Decisions; The Governor's Campaign; Florida; and "The Saints Go Marching In." Condoleezza "Condi" Rice (born November 14, 1954) is an American diplomat, political scientist, civil servant, and professor who served as the 66th United States Secretary of State from 2005 to 2009 and as the 20th United States National Security Advisor from 2001 to 2005. Rice was the first female African-American Secretary of State and the first woman to serve as National Security Advisor. Rice pioneered the policy of Transformational Diplomacy directed toward expanding the number of democratic governments. In March 2009, Rice returned to Stanford University as a political science professor and the Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy. Condoleezza Rice has excelled as a diplomat, political scientist, and concert pianist. Her achievements run the gamut from helping to oversee the collapse of communism in Europe and the decline of the Soviet Union, to working to protect the country in the aftermath of 9-11, to becoming only the second woman - and the first black woman ever -- to serve as Secretary of State. But until she was 25 she never learned to swim. Not because she wouldn't have loved to, but because when she was a little girl in Birmingham, Alabama, Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor decided he'd rather shut down the city's pools than give black citizens access. Throughout the 1950's, Birmingham's black middle class largely succeeded in insulating their children from the most corrosive effects of racism, providing multiple support systems to ensure the next generation would live better than the last. But by 1963, when Rice was applying herself to her fourth grader's lessons, the situation had grown intolerable. Birmingham was an environment where blacks were expected to keep their head down and do what they were told -- or face violent consequences. That spring two bombs exploded in Rice's neighborhood amid a series of chilling Klu Klux Klan attacks. Months later, four young girls lost their lives in a particularly vicious bombing. So how was Rice able to achieve what she ultimately did? Her father, John, a minister and educator, instilled a love of sports and politics. Her mother, a teacher, developed Condoleezza's passion for piano and exposed her to the fine arts. From both, Rice learned the value of faith in the face of hardship and the importance of giving back to the community. Her parents' fierce unwillingness to set limits propelled her to the venerable halls of Stanford University, where she quickly rose through the ranks to become the university's second-in-command. An expert in Soviet and Eastern European Affairs, she played a leading role in U.S. policy as the Iron Curtain fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated. Less than a decade later, at the apex of the hotly contested 2000 presidential election, she received the exciting news, just shortly before her father's death, that she would go on to the White House as the first female National Security Advisor. As comfortable describing lighthearted family moments as she is recalling the poignancy of her mother's cancer battle and th.…