The first-ever female Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, will be in Ramsey next month to talk about her latest book, Prague Winter, A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948.

The current professor, whose long history of public service includes positions in the National Security Council and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, will speak at Don Bosco Prep in an event co-sponsored by Bookends Library in Ridgewood.

Don Bosco released the following details about the event, and description of Albright’s book:

The event will be a combination of an interview and question and answer period conducted by Albert H. Wunsch III, Esq., author, trial lawyer, television/ radio personality, historian and President of the Don Bosco Alumni Association and William “Pat” Schuber, Esq., Associate Professor of the School of Administrative Science, Fairleigh Dickinson University and former New Jersey Assemblyman, Bergen County Executive and Mayor of Bogota.

“Prague Winter” is the personal story of Secretary Albright’s birth in 1937 and earliest years in Czechoslovakia woven within the context of her parents’ lives, the historical period of 1937-1948, and the challenges in making world decisions and policy because of varied national perspectives.  

Madeleine was the daughter of Anna and Josef Korbel, a young diplomat working for the Czechoslovakian government who moved the family in 1939 to the government-in-exile in London, while the country was occupied by the Nazis.  The Korbel family was granted political asylum in the United States in 1949, and daughter Madeleine became a U.S. citizen in 1957. Josef Korbel became the Dean of the University of Denver’s school of international studies, where one of his star pupils was another future secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.

Madeleine Albright was raised as a Roman Catholic.  She became an Episcopalian when she was married, and found out in her late fifties, when she was being vetted for her appointment as Secretary of State, that she was of Jewish ancestry and that many of her relatives had died in the Holocaust.  

In “Prague Winter: A Personal Story of Remembrance and War, 1937-1948”, she explores and honors her Jewish heritage in a blend of memoir and historical fact revealing a heartbreaking story of both loss and discovery. “I had no idea that my family heritage was Jewish or that more than twenty of my relatives had died in the Holocaust,” she writes. “I had been brought up to believe in a history of my Czechoslovak homeland that was less tangled and more straightforward than the reality.”

This special event is sponsored by Bookends of Ridgewood for the benefit of the Don Bosco Prep Alumni Association.

Albright will be at Do Bosco on Tuesday, February 19. Tickets are $25 for adults and $20 for students. The ticket price includes one paperback copy of "Prague Winter." Seating is general admission and the doors will open at 5 p.m. with the program to begin at 7 p.m.

To purchase tickets, contact Bookends at 201-445-0726 or the Don Bosco Prep Advancement Office at alumni@donboscoprep.org or 201-327-2049.