Introduction: 'Becoming Madam Chancellor'. Part I. 'The Personal is the Political': 1. The extreme make-over of Angela Merkel: gender, style and substance. 2. A Pastor's daughter in a 'difficult Fatherland': reconciling East and West German identities. 3. From Staatsräson to Realpolitik: reconfiguring German-Israeli relations. Part II. From understudy to leading lady: Angela Merkel on the global stage. 4. Checkmate: Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin and the dilemmas of regional hegemony. 5. Madam non and the euro-crisis: shaping economic integration and governance. Part III. 'Method Merkel' and the Push for Domestic Reforms. 6. Fukushima, mon Amour: Merkel and the (supra)national energy turn-around. 7. Germany as a land of immigration: citizenship, refugees and the welcoming culture. 8. 'Misunderestimating' the world's most powerful woman, or why gender still matters. Bibliography.

Since 2005, Angela Merkel has transformed not only the way Germans see themselves but also the way that politicians worldwide, male and female, perceive women in power. The East German daughter of a Protestant pastor, this physicist-turned-politician has deployed her life experiences to cultivate a unique set of leadership skills. Her pragmatic, data-driven, and future-oriented approach to politics - grounded in a commitment to democratic pluralism, human rights, and personal responsibility - has produced extraordinary paradigm shifts in many national policies in the wake of major crises. As the first English-language scholarly book to provide an in-depth account of her career and influence, Becoming Madam Chancellor examines Merkel's achievements across six key policy domains, contextualizes these within broader German history before and after reunification, and uncovers the personal and political factors that have contributed to Chancellor Merkel's hard-earned status as the world's most powerful woman.