The seas were angry, and European communism was in the throes of collapse. It was December 1989, and George Bush had arrived for a summit with Mikhail Gorbachev on the stormy waters off Malta in the Mediterranean. He introduced the Soviet President to his advisers, stopping near a reed-thin, 35-year-old African-American woman. "This is Condoleezza Rice," Bush told Gorbachev. "She tells me everything I know about the Soviet Union." Gorbachev looked her over--startled, in that setting, by the adviser's race, gender and youth. "I hope you know a lot," he said.
She did. As a staff member of the National Security...
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