Publisher's Synopsis
An E-Book for experiencing the life of a legend from his childhood, a complete biography of Rachel Maddow.Maddow was born in Castro Valley, California. Her father, Robert B. Maddow, is a former the United States Air Force captain who resigned his commission the year before her birth and then worked as a lawyer for the East Bay Municipal Utility District. Her mother, Elaine (née Gosse), was a school program administrator. She has one older brother, David. Her paternal grandfather was from a family of Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews (the original family surname being "Medvedof"), who arrived in the United States from the Russian Empire. Her paternal grandmother was of Dutch (Protestant) descent. Her Canadian mother, originally from Newfoundland and Labrador, has English and Irish ancestry.[14]Maddow has said her family is "very, very Catholic" and she grew up in a community that her mother has described as "very conservative" Maddow was a competitive athlete and participated in high school volleyball, basketball, and swimming.Referring to John Hughes's films, Maddow has described herself as being "a cross between the jock and the antisocial girl" in high school. She is a graduate of Castro Valley High School and attended Stanford University. While a freshman, she was outed as a lesbian by the college newspaper when an interview with her was published before she could tell her parents.She earned a degree in public policy at Stanford in 1994. At graduation, she was awarded the John Gardner Fellowship. She was the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship and began her postgraduate study in 1995 at Lincoln College, Oxford. She had also been awarded a Marshall Scholarship the same year but turned it down in favor of the Rhodes. This made her the first open lesbian to win an international Rhodes Scholarship. In 2001, she earned a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in politics at the University of Oxford. Her thesis is titled HIV/AIDS and Health Care Reform in British and American Prisons, and her supervisor was Lucia Zedner. In June 2005, Maddow became a regular panelist on the MSNBC show Tucker. During and after the November 2006 election, she was a guest on CNN's Paula Zahn Now; she was also a correspondent for The Advocate Newsmagazine, an LGBT-oriented short-form newsmagazine for Logo deriving from news items published by The Advocate. In January 2008, Maddow became an MSNBC political analyst and was a regular panelist on MSNBC's Race for the White House with David Gregory and MSNBC's election coverage as well as a frequent contributor on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.In 2008, Maddow was the substitute host for Countdown with Keith Olbermann, her first time hosting a program on MSNBC. Maddow described herself on-air as "nervous". Keith Olbermann complimented her work, and she was brought back to host Countdown the next month. The show she hosted was the highest-rated news program among people aged 25 to 54. For her success, Olbermann ranked Maddow third in his show's segment "World's Best Persons". In July 2008, Maddow filled in again for several broadcasts. Maddow also filled in for David Gregory as host of Race for the White House."You get to know a lot more of the interesting life story"
