Albright To Write Memoirs

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has agreed to a contract with Talk Miramax Books to write her memoirs.

She became the third major political figure in recent weeks to reach a deal with the company run by Tina Brown and Harvey Weinstein.

"Madeleine Albright is one of the most distinguished and inspiring women of our time," Brown said in a statement Friday. "Her memoir will be an epic personal odyssey."

In the past month, Talk Miramax has negotiated contracts with New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and attorney David Boies, who led the Justice Department's successful antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. and Vice President Al Gore's unsuccessful effort to allow manual recounts of disputed ballots in Florida.

"This announces we're a serious presence in the book world," said Jonathan Burnham, president and editor-in-chief of Talk Miramax Books, referring to the Albright memoir. "We're prepared to make major acquisitions."

Albright is expected to receive low seven figures for her book. The memoir, currently untitled, is scheduled to come out in the spring of 2003. It will be edited on a freelance basis by Sarah Crichton, forced out recently as publisher of Little, Brown and Co., a division of AOL Time Warner Inc.

Among the books Crichton worked on at Little, Brown was the best-selling memoir All Too Human, by former White House communications director George Stephanopoulos.

Talk Miramax is well connected with the Democratic Party. Brown and Weinstein were prominent supporters of former President Clinton, and then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, now a New York senator, appeared on the debut cover of Brown's Talk Magazine.

By Hillel Italie