Op-Ed: Former Secretary of State Rice Signs $2.5 Million 3-Book Deal

Unless someone is a devout fan, it's hard to understand a rush to buy a book written by anyone whose life is an open book, and we just lived through it with them through a myriad newspaper articles, television interviews and their own press conferences.

Fans of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will welcome the news that she signed a three-book deal with Crown books, a division of Random House, Inc. For the rest of us who were highly critical of Rice (and everyone else tied to the Bush administration) for her blind support of George Bush and his war and other policies, it’s a big yawn mixed with disgust over a waste of trees. One could reasonably expect to not find anything in a book written or ghost written by any of these people that couldn’t be found for free with a conscientious Google search. In spite of harsh criticisms of Rice, 54, she’s thought of by publishers as the “more likable” and “less ideological” than other Bush supporters, such as former Vice President Dick Cheney. According to nameless publishing insiders, the book deal is worth about $2.5 million. The first book detailing her involvement as secretary of state and national security adviser is scheduled to come out sometime in 2011. "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," a Crown spokesman said. That’s public relations speak for she’s going to go into a self-aggrandizing spin that whirls faster than a satellite gone out of control in outer space, to alibi and excuse her way through everything she and the Bush administration did for eight years. The second and third books will be a family memoir in adult and youth-oriented versions. They are scheduled for release in 2012. Crown is also the publisher of The Audacity of Hope by President Barack Obama.