Condoleezza Rice: An American Life by Elisabeth Bumiller, Random House, biography, 400 pp., $27.95

What Bumiller has done so brilliantly is to expose her subject’s patterns of behavior with regard to her steady professional ascent. According to Bumiller’s reporting, it is Rice’s practice to identify and engage the man at the top, agree with his policies, and do the dirty work like firing a longtime Stanford employee whose husband was dying of cancer, and who depended on campus housing. Rice, too, was fiercely loyal to the boss so long as he was the boss. By the time Rice joined the Bush administration, she had perfected her formula for success. Ironically, it was Josef Korbel, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s father, who mentored Rice during her Russian studies.

Rice grew up in Birmingham, the daughter of a minister and his musician wife. Rice’s forebears were educated. She and her parents lived in a middle- class black neighborhood, and Rice, an only child, was cosseted and encouraged throughout her childhood to achieve. This she did with regard to the piano. She also studied figure skating, but, as Bumiller points out, she had no genius in either endeavor, though she was competent in all that she attempted. She was a lightning rod at Stanford where she served as provost and loudly opposed affirmative action at the doctoral level.

Bumiller opens her superb book with scenes from the situation room at the White House after the 9/11 tragedy. For months Richard Clarke, an antiterrorism expert, had warned Rice that it appeared an attack by Al Quaeda would occur on American soil. Rice would later have to answer to the nation for her failure to act. As national security adviser, she told George Bush to go to war with Iraq. When she was a child, Rice’s parents called her ‘president’ of the family. Because she will drag the failed Bush policies behind her in perpetuity, she will probably not hear the word ‘president’ applied to her again.

This is a fascinating read by an exceptional writer.

The Venetian Betrayal by Steve Berry, Ballantine Books, fiction, 496 pp., $25.95

Lawyer turned writer Berry turns in his sixth stellar performance with this lightning-paced page-turner about the mystery surrounding the death of Alexander the Great and a contemporary plot to conquer the world. The location of the great conqueror’s tomb has been a mystery for millennia. This is the third novel to feature former U.S. Justice Dept. investigator Cotton Malone, now the proprietor of a rare book store in Copenhagen. Malone agrees to a clandestine meeting at a local museum with Cassiopeia Vitt, the beautiful, brave, wealthy Muslim with whom he has shared past adventures. Their meetingplace is consumed by fire, Greek fire, a substance whose chemical composition has been unknown since the end of the Byzantine empire. There begins a perilous trek that takes the duo to Venice and Central Asia in search of Alexander’s tomb and the healing serum which may have been buried with him. A large impediment presents itself in the form of Central Asian Federation Supreme Minister Irina Zovastina, a malevolent leader who has teamed up with some of the most powerful people on earth to kill or conquer far beyond her borders. Berry never disappoints, and his latest take on this mystery of history may be his best yet.

Without Warning by Eugenia Lovett West, mystery, St. Martin’s Minotaur, 294 p., $24.95