Susan E. Rice

I thoroughly enjoyed this although I hesitated to pick it up, given the length and expected complexity. However, Susan Rice knows how to write and her family history and her ability to clearly explain what she was doing over her work history is, frankly, remarkable....and just plain fascinating. I feel as thought I KNOW her because she's talking right TO the reader about her thinking along the way as she explains what is happening. I really hated to put this book DOWN and kept wanting to get right back to it! I'm quite sure she can be a little overwhelming in person, simply because she is SO incredibly capable and it's hard to hide that---although she says she hates to admit that Obama really WAS the smartest person in the room. How she managed a marriage and two children and her incredible and progressively increasing career is covered but I'm sure she could write a second book just about that. Of course I would also love to hear lots more from her about her feelings about the Covid 19 pandemic, having lived through the Ebola crisis management. I had no idea how much I would enjoy Rice's writing about her life---now I need to go back and look for interviews with her so I can pay more attention!!… (más)

Susan Rice was an important member of Barack Obama’s government as the US Ambassador to the UN in his first term and then as the Head of the National Security Council in his second. This is her autobiography and it’s a good story.
She and her brother Johnny were the children of very well educated, well paid people who believed in public service as a vocation. Her father Emmett was a PhD economist and her mother Lois a graduate of Radcliffe. Both children were raised in Washington DC. Rice attended Stanford university where she met her husband, Canadian Ian Cameron. They have two children, Jake and Maris.She was a Rhodes scholar and earned a PhD. Her job experience is impressive and she quickly rose through the ranks and developed important relationships with insiders. She meets world leader and their representatives and tells some interesting stories as an insider. She comes across as tough, innovative, smart, dedicated, principled, fair, dynamic, funny, determined and caring. This is an enjoyable book.… (más)

I made it about halfway through this book before I concluded that I was in over my head. Susan Rice is a good writer, and her achievements are remarkable. The book is her personal and professional memoir, with an emphasis on her professional life. She was a Democratic policy advisor, UN ambassador and US National Security Advisor, so it shouldn't have surprised me that the book would be filled with details of the inner workings of these agencies. I just didn't realize what a policy wonk she is. Since most of this is somewhat unfamiliar to me, the book was a bit of a slog. All of the various agencies and roles at times became a blur to me. Once again, I'm not knocking her writing, and the content of the book would be valuable to anyone interested in working in some way for the federal government, but it's not quite in my wheelhouse. I picked up the book when I learned that she might be considered for the VP spot in the 2020 election, and the book answered my question: Would she make a good VP? Absolutely!… (más)

A Stanford alum, Rhodes Scholar and Oxford Ph.D., Susan Rice served as assistant secretary of state for African affairs, 1997-2001, U.S. permanent representative (ambassador) to the United Nations, 2009-1013, and President Obama's national security advisor, 2013-2017.

To the general public, Rice is best known for her television appearances on September 16, 2012, in which she repeated the U.S. intelligence community's unclassified description/explanation of the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. Partisans continue to pillory her for the "horrible lies" [reader's comment in my hometown newspaper] she uttered then, even though she was repeating talking points prepared by others and had no independent knowledge of the attack or its origins. In 2012, in the midst of a presidential election, Rice was constrained from blasting her critics, but the experience was searing and the hullaballoo probably eliminated her chance of becoming secretary of state. To exorcise these demons was clearly one of Rice's objectives in writing *Tough Love*, although far from the only one. Rice's story of her family: her Jamaican immigrant and southern slave ancestors, the lessons she learned from her talented but feuding parents, her successful marriage, and the difficulties and achievements of her children: all are significant parts of *Though Love*.

Rice describes herself as "not seeking permission or affirmation from others, [which] I now suspect accounts for why I inadvertently intimidate some people, especially certain men, and perhaps also why I have long inspired motivated detractors who simply can't deal with me." (p.38) Which side of this divide one stands on, intimidated or non-intimidated, detractor or admirer, may well determine one's reaction to this book. That has a lot to do with whether one is a Democrat or a Republican, an admirer of Barack Obama or a detractor. With the passage of time, however, this book will age well. It is crisply written and rapidly paced. About as clearly as is possible, Rice describes the twists and turns of the United States' relations with Africa, other regional hot spots, and the world's major powers.

Admirers of Richard Holbrooke may be taken aback by Rice's dislike for this oversized personality. This is her unvarnished opinion, subject to the judgment of future scholars. Some may be annoyed that Rice seems to describe herself as perfect, and the policies she implemented as perfect too, but that isn't true. She describes how an elder colleague warned her that she was "overly directive," stifled "contrary advice," and would "fail" if she did not "correct course" (pp.191, 192). She acknowledges "the very high costs of limiting our actions" on Syria and is "neither content nor proud to admit it" (p 369). She describes the root of the Obama administration's policy failures (p. 450) as "a mismatch between our stated objectives and the means we were prepared to employ to achieve them," and its underestimation of how "growing domestic partisan divisions were hampering America's ability to lead . . ."

Rice describes (pp. 401-07) how quickly the Obama administration grasped the destructive potential of the 2014 Ebola outbreak, and the resources it brought to bear, including the U.S. military, to suppress it, a lesson particularly relevant in 2020.

Some readers may be offended by the occasional low colloquialisms that Rice uses, like how she gave Holbrooke "the finger" and had to have thorns pulled out of her "booty," but such language reflects the temper of our times. Other books on current affairs, such as Michael Lewis's The Fifth Risk, are written in a similar style.… (más)