Rice inks $2.5m three-book deal

Condoleezza Rice's first book is set for 2011.

NEW YORK - Former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice has agreed to a three-book deal with Crown Publishers, starting with a memoir about her years in the Bush administration.

"Rice will combine candid narrative and acute analysis to tell the story of her time in the White House and as America's top diplomat, and her role in protecting American security and shaping foreign policy during the extraordinary period from 2001-2009," according to a statement issued yesterday by Crown, a division of Random House Inc.

Rice's book is planned for 2011.

The deal is worth at least $2.5 million, according to two publishing officials with knowledge of the negotiations. The officials asked not to be identified, citing the confidentiality of the talks.

Rice, 54, also will write a memoir about her family, scheduled for 2012, and a young-adult edition of her family book that will come out at the same time. None of the planned works is currently titled.

A foreign policy adviser during the administration of George H. W. Bush, Rice served as national security adviser and secretary of state under former president George W. Bush. Although often criticized as unduly loyal to the president and some of his policies, including the Iraq war, she is still regarded among publishers as more likable than Bush, former vice president Dick Cheney, and other administration officials.

She is also seen as having an interesting personal story, rising from a segregated community in Birmingham, Ala., to become provost of Stanford University and eventually the first black woman to be secretary of state.

Her family memoir, according to Crown, will tell of her "upbringing in the context of the extraordinary efforts made by her parents and other people in the community to raise children against a backdrop of fading Jim Crow laws and emergent civil rights initiatives."