Condoleezza Rice new memoir to detail close calls of "all-out war" around globe

Condoleezza Rice will present her personal behind-the-scenes story of the aftermath of the September 11 attacks and the build up to the Iraq war in her second memoir to be published in November.

"No Higher Honor" will be a "master class in statecraft and diplomacy," her publisher said Wednesday. Crown Publishers promised Rice would reveal how she "kept the world's relationships with Iran, North Korea, and Libya from collapsing into chaos" in her posts as national security adviser and later secretary of state under President George W. Bush.

The book promises to be a "vivid and forthcoming" account, while revealing "new details" about the contentious debate surrounding the invasion of Iraq, said Crown, a unit of Bertelsmann AG subsidiary Random House, Inc.

"The book also takes the reader into secret negotiating rooms where the fates of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Lebanon often hung in the balance, and draws back the curtain on how frighteningly close all-out war loomed in clashes involving India and Pakistan, Russia and Georgia, and in East Africa," Crown said.

Rice, who was the first woman to serve as U.S. national security adviser, now teaches at Stanford University.

Her first memoir, "Extraordinary, Ordinary People," which recounted her family life and upbringing as an African American in segregation-era Alabama, was published last year.