If George W. Bush goes down in history as the most disastrous US president since Herbert Hoover, it will be because of his foreign policy mistakes. Yet the person who tutored candidate Bush on foreign policy, co-ordinated it in his first term and was its public face in his second term is probably the most respected member of the Bush administration both at home and abroad. This is the paradox that Marcus Mabry sets out to explain in Condoleezza Rice: Naked Ambition.

Throughout the Bush administration, Rice has been the most effective emissary for the President’s foreign policy because she doesn’t fit the stereotype. Rather than being a shoot-first-ask-questions-later wannabe cowboy, she is an accomplished black female academic whose best friend is gay and best girlfriend is to the ‘left of Lenin’.

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