Selected by President Clinton as the first woman to be Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright rode into office on a wave of popularity. She was an instant celebrity in Washington and around the world, recognized everywhere and widely admired for her blunt style and dramatic personal history. Facing a Congress controlled by the opposition and an unruly world where the rules of the Cold War no longer applied, this tough-talking grandmother and Democratic political insider adopted the highest profile of any Cabinet official since Henry Kissinger as she struggled to convert her personal stature into foreign policy success. Inside the State Department, she grappled with an entrenched bureaucracy to force new issues such as women's rights and international crime onto the foreign policy agenda.As a reporter for the Washington Post , Thomas Lippman spent two and a half years travelling with Albright around the world, from crisis to crisis, to compile this inside account of her campaign to reshape American diplomacy for the new century.