1999
Madeleine Albright
Diplomatic force
Armed with only an academic’s
intellect and a diplomat’s toolbox, U.S.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
out maneuvered the post–Cold War
Russians, members of NATO and even
some in her own government to lead
the effort to bring an end to a ghastly
campaign against ethnic Albanians
in Slobodan Milosevic’s Kosovo. Her
critics and boosters alike had a name for
it: Madeleine’s War.
The episode marked the high-
water mark of American humanitarian
intervention in the post-Soviet world.
Albright worked the phones and
her Air Force jet to hold together
the NATO alliance to build pressure
on Moscow and to avoid even the
slightest of differences among allies.
When possible, she employed her
counterpart’s native tongue because,
after all, she speaks six languages.
In the end, Moscow acquiesced to
NATO’s stepping in to launch a “hu-
manitarian war,” and Milosevic backed
down. For Albright, the mission had
an added personal element: as a child,
she fled the regimes of Adolf Hitler and,
later, Joseph Stalin. She already had
seen what unchecked regimes could
accomplish—and also what Americans
at their best could. —Philip Elliott1998
J.K. Rowling
Literary phenomenon
In the fall of 1998, Harry Potter crossed the Atlantic. The
wizarding world imagined by author J.K. Rowling already
had a foothold in Europe: the release of Harry Potter and
the Chamber of Secrets in the U.K. that July made it the
first children’s book to top the British hardback best-seller
list. Buoyed by the series’ success and critical acclaim
across the pond, the first Harry Potter book debuted state-
side in September to enthusiastic reviews. Before year’s
end, Warner Bros. had secured the film rights, and the
boy wizard was on his way to becoming a globally recog-
nized brand. Two decades later, authors who cite Rowling
as a creative influence—from Rick Riordan to Tomi
Adeyemi—are power players in their own right, and the
publishing industry has been transformed by Rowling’s
unlikely rise. The billions of dollars Harry Potter made
in bookstores and at the box office resulted in a surge in
similar fare, from Twilight to The Hunger Games. Melissa
Anelli, author of Harry, a History, says the series proved to
publishers that young audiences are “not just willing to
read a book, but would follow the stories they loved to the
end of the earth”—and thus, that young-adult literature is
worth serious investment. ÑCate Matthews
1990sROWLING: NEIL WILDER—CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES; ALBRIGHT: DOUGLAS GRAHAM—CQ ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES 83