Condoleezza Rice agrees to a three-book deal

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 administration of President George W. Bush.

"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 Sunday by Crown, a division of Random House Inc. Crown also published then-Sen. Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope."

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 are currently titled.

A compelling personal story
A foreign policy adviser during the administration of the first President Bush, Rice served as national security adviser and secretary of state under 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 and less ideological than Bush, 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."

Jim Crow is a term used to describe the racial segregation laws once common in southern U.S. states before the civil rights movement in the 1950s and '60s brought pressure on the courts and federal government to end such practices.