CNN.com August 2005:

"After leaving office, Albright published a memoir, "Madame Secretary." Today, however, she's working on another book -- this one about her famous collection of brooches.

"I have a lot of different pins ... and it all kind of started as a joke," Albright said. "I do like jewelry, but when Saddam Hussein called me a snake, I happened to have a snake pin. And I was doing an interview, actually with CNN, and your cameras picked up that I had on a snake pin, and I was asked why and I said, 'because Saddam Hussein has just called me a snake.'"

Soon, the whole world watched the brooches that Albright affixed to her lapel as some kind of signal, a sort of international reading of the tea leaves.

"When people asked me what kind of a mood I was in or what I was working on I'd say, 'read my pins.' So, then it kind of got to be a thing in itself, and I now have a lot of them and they mostly have wonderful stories attached to them ..."

Order the book - Read My Pins (stories from a Diplomat's jewel box)

Smithsonian - Madeleine Albright Read My Pins Collections

The New Yorker - BIG PIN