Living History by Unknown (best non fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

meetings, which he did. He hosted one at the White House in the Blue Room during the Blairs’ official visit in 1998, and convened follow-up meetings that included other like-minded leaders, including Italian President Romano Prodi and Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson at New York University in September 1998, and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Italian Premier Massimo D’Alema and Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso in Florence in November 1999.

These Third Way meetings introduced a new way for the Administration to work with America’s traditional allies. And we had few allies better than Italy. Bill and I had visited Tuscany and Venice in 1987 with a group of Governors, and I looked for any excuse to return. In 1994 we traveled to Naples for the G-7 Summit, hosted by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. I fulfilled a lifelong desire to explore Neapolitan art and culture, and to visit Pompeii, Ravello and the Amalfi Coast. I wished I could have lingered there, or at least returned by now. Similarly, when we made our state visit to Rome, I enjoyed every moment, and I was delighted when Florence was chosen for the Third Way Conference co-hosted by New York University under the leadership of John Sexton, then Dean of the Law School, now President of the University. These visits to Italy gave me the chance to spend time with a succession of Prime Ministers―Berlusconi, Prodi, D’Alema and Carlo Ciampi, all of whom were good allies, particularly on Bosnia, Kosovo and NATO expansion.

In Palermo, Sicily, I attended a Vital Voices leadership training program and spoke in the restored Opera House at a conference sponsored by Leoluca Orlando, the Mayor of Palermo. Orlando believed in the power of culture to change lives and societies. He had led a grassroots campaign to take back Palermo from the grip of the Mafia. He organized schoolchildren to “adopt” a monument that they would care for as a way to instill values of civic responsibility and caring. He spoke often to clergy and business leaders to encourage them to assist him in ending the reign of terror the people were living under. Finally, after a series of cold-blooded assassinations of public officials, the women of Palermo had had enough. They hung bedsheets from their windows, proclaiming in bold letters: BASTA―Enough. This collective show of power combined with popular demonstrations turned the tide in Sicily’s long struggle with the Mafia.

Orlando’s creative governing was a living example of a Third Way approach to problem-solving that brought his people a respite from fear and violence. Openness to ideas for improving people’s lives is the hallmark of good leadership, but sometimes leaders need encouragement, especially if they are new democracies trying to implement principles of equality and self-government for the first time. The Administration thought that high-level visits were important in our efforts to forge diplomatic ties with nascent democracies.

And that’s how I came to be sitting on an airplane about to take off to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine and Russia―Siberia, to be exact―some of the most remote locales I ever visited. But first we had to get there, which proved more nerveracking than expected.

Again, I was traveling with Kelly and Melanne, and with Karen Finney, my deputy press secretary, a tall young woman with great stamina and humor. We took off from Andrews Air Force Base on Sunday night, November 9, aboard a Boeing 707 that had been used in the past as Air Force One. We had been in the air about ten minutes and I had settled down with my briefing book about Kazakhstan, our first stop, when a crew member calmly told me that we had to return to Andrews because of problems with one of the engines. I wasn’t particularly worried. I knew a plane that size could easily fly on three of its four engines. And I had total confidence in Air Force pilots, the best in the world. I went back to my book.

We landed smoothly at Andrews with only three engines in operation and immediately were met by fire trucks with lights flashing. While mechanics investigated, I called Bill to tell him about the delay, hopeful that we would be able to take off again when the engine was fixed.

We finally got word a few hours later that we couldn’t leave until the next afternoon, so at midnight we all went home. When I arrived at the White House, I found Bill talking on the phone to Chelsea, who was in her dorm and had seen a “Breaking News” report on CNN.com: “First Lady’s plane turns back … fuel dumped … everyone on board safe.” I got a call from my mother, who just wanted to hear my voice. Other friends phoned after seeing the headline in The Washington Post: FIRST LADY’S JET ABORTS; CENTRAL

ASIA TRIP DELAYED. All of the fuss made it seem as if I had ejected from the plane and parachuted to earth. We left the next day when the repairs were complete. The journey was not for the weak or meek. We landed on dirt runways with no lights, watched men with shovels try to de-ice our plane and were expected to sample a wide array of vodkas at every stop and at all hours of the day and night. It was one of the most exotic and evocative trips I took during my tenure at the White House. Mountainous, stark and eerily beautiful, the socalled “Stans” were home to the old Silk Road traveled by Marco Polo. Many of the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Uzbeks; some of whom still dressed in traditional indigenous costumes, were descendants of the Golden Horde, the soldiers of Genghis and Kublai Khan. In the post-Soviet era, they were trying to create a modern equivalent of the Silk Road so that their nations and economies could flourish into the twentyfirst century. Although Russified during the Soviet era, each country had retained a distinct ethnic character and a surprisingly diverse population.

Kazakhstan is an oil-and gas-rich country with the potential