Research Paper on:
Ann Blackman's Biography on Madeleine Korbel Albright

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Cinderella stories are made. This image of a steadfast woman achieving the impossible shines through in Time journalists Ann Blackmans exhaustive 1998 volume, Seasons of Her Life: A Biography  of Madeleine Korbel Albright. Blackman was able to penetrate the surface of Albrights carefully cultivated public persona, and reveal a fascinating and often difficult life that belies the woman  of privilege and influence she is today. Seasons of Her Life is a painstakingly researched biography which makes clear the authors great admiration for her subject, and is assisted  considerably by Albrights enthusiastic support of the project, providing Blackman with personal photographs, several in-depth interviews, and unprecedented access to several family members and professional colleagues. The over 200  interviews conducted for the book add dimension and insight into a most complicated woman. While Blackmans biography has lent itself to criticism that it focuses too much on Albrights private  life, and not nearly enough on her professional accomplishments. However, assessments of her career as Secretary of State are readily available in any newspaper or weekly news magazine.  Blackman is more interested in probing what motivated this woman to achieve a type of political success that was uniquely her own, and not dependent upon a man to pave  the way. The biography is single-minded in its efforts to expose the root of Albrights uncompromising ambition. The answer, it seems, can be found thousands of miles from  the State Department, in Prague, Czechoslovakia, where Marie Jana Korbelova was born on May 15, 1937. She always seemed destined for a charmed life as the first child of  Josef and Mandula Korbel, but Albrights mother recalled in a deeply personal essay how world events would intrude and forever alter their lives: "The time of our personal happiness was