The Last Palace: Europe's Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House

by Norman Eisen

Overview

A sweeping yet intimate narrative about the last hundred years of turbulent European history, as seen through one of Mitteleuropa’s greatest houses—and the lives of its occupants
 
When Norman Eisen moved into the US ambassador’s residence in Prague, returning to the land his mother had fled after the Holocaust, he was startled to discover swastikas hidden beneath the furniture in his new home. These symbols of Nazi Germany were remnants of the residence’s forgotten history, and evidence that we never live far from the past.
 
From that discovery unspooled the twisting, captivating tale of four of the remarkable people who had called this palace home. Their story is Europe’s, and The Last Palace chronicles the upheavals that transformed the continent over the past century. There was the optimistic Jewish financial baron, Otto Petschek, who built the palace after World War I as a statement of his faith in democracy, only to have that faith shattered; Rudolf Toussaint, the cultured, compromised German general who occupied the palace during World War II, ultimately putting his life at risk to save the house and Prague itself from destruction; Laurence Steinhardt, the first postwar US ambassador whose quixotic struggle to keep the palace out of Communist hands was paired with his pitched efforts to rescue the country from Soviet domination; and Shirley Temple Black, an eyewitness to the crushing of the 1968 Prague Spring by Soviet tanks, who determined to return to Prague and help end totalitarianism—and did just that as US ambassador in 1989.
 
Weaving in the life of Eisen’s own mother to demonstrate how those without power and privilege moved through history, The Last Palace tells the dramatic and surprisingly cyclical tale of the triumph of liberal democracy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780451495785
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/04/2018
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	678,331
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Norman Eisen is the author of A Case for the American People: The United States v. Donald J. Trump; Democracy’s Defenders; and The Last Palace. He was special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2020, including for the impeachment and trial of President Donald Trump. He previously served as ethics czar for President Barack Obama and then as his ambassador to the Czech Republic. Eisen is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his family.

Read an Excerpt

Part I
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "The Last Palace"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Norman Eisen.
Excerpted by permission of Crown/Archetype.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Map of Prague, 1918-2018 vi

Author's Note x

Prologue 1

Part I

1 The Golden Son Of The Golden City 13

2 The King Of Coal 39

3 Palace Neverending 61

4 The Final Child 82

Part II

5 An Artist Of War 101

6 The Most Dangerous Man In The Reich 126

7 Is Prague Burning? 147

8 "If You're Going Through Hell, Keep Going" 163

Part III

9 "He Who Is Master Of Bohemia Is Master Of Europe" 177

10 Lush Life 196

11 Small Salvations 212

12 "Never, Never, Never Give In" 241

Part IV

13 Nothing Crushes Freedom Like A Tank 259

14 A Revolutionary Production 283

15 Truth Prevails 308

16 "The Past Is Never Dead. It's Not Even Past." 336

Sources And Acknowledgments 359

Notes 361

Index 393

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/09/2018
In this engrossing tale by Eisen, former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic, the changes of 20th-century Europe are illuminated by the stories of one historic Prague building, some of its notable residents, and the author’s mother, a feisty Holocaust survivor. When Eisen, appointed to his post by President Obama, moved in 2011 into the palace of the title, now the U.S. ambassador’s residence, he was intrigued by a Nazi label on an antique table. What, he wondered, was the true story of the mansion, constructed between the world wars by Jewish coal magnate and banker Otto Petschek as an homage to European culture? Eisen’s nonagenarian mother, Frieda Grunfeld Eisen, wasn’t surprised by his finding; she survived Auschwitz, only to flee her Czech homeland as the Communists consolidated power after the war. Eisen interweaves Frieda’s story with those of Petschek and his family; Rudolf Toussaint, the conflicted German colonel who lived in the palace during the Nazi occupation; Lawrence Steinhardt, the U.S. ambassador who kept it out of Communist hands; and Shirley Temple Black, who, as ambassador beginning in the late 1980s, witnessed the end of communism. Together their stories illuminate the ebb and flow of totalitarianism, painting a picture both hopeful and disheartening. This action-packed yet lyrically written page-turner confers a fascinating human understanding of Europe’s past and present. Agent: Eric Simonoff, William Morris Endeavor. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Norman Eisen has written an enthralling history of a palace and its very real ghosts. By telling the story of the Prague mansion where he resided as America’s ambassador, Eisen provides a poignant reflection on the haunting twists of the past century, including his own very American family tale.”
—Walter Isaacson

From the Publisher

2018-06-27
The former ambassador to the Czech Republic tells the story of a historically significant palace in Prague.The palace, which began construction in 1924, was the project of Otto Petschek (1882-1934), a wealthy financier who left it behind when he went to study law. His family was the leading banking family in Prague, and they helped it become the 10th largest postwar economy. Not just a biography of Petschek and his mansion, Eisen's tale is also a history of Czechoslovakia, beginning with its birth in October 1918, and his family. President Woodrow Wilson, enjoying an academic friendship with Czech leader Tomas Masaryk, supported the Czech people and their closely related Slovak neighbors' bid for self-determination. The palace that Otto imagined in 1924 was designed by German architect Max Spielmann, and the estate became Otto's obsession as he ordered it to be built, redesigned, tore down, and rebuilt. His mania was such that he bought full-grown trees and an entire room—walls and all—to be shipped on flatbed train cars. But he died before World War II, and his family escaped the Nazis to London. The house suffered from Nazi and Soviet occupation as well as looting and damage before and after the war, but there were those who saw its greatness and fought to save it. Not least of these was Otto's butler, who stayed with the house through all the owners until his death, guarding what treasures he could. Eisen, a senior fellow at Brookings, also introduces us to other occupants, including Col. Rudolf Toussaint, who worked tirelessly to avoid war, and American Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt, who brokered the simultaneous withdrawal of Russian and American troops and secured the sale of the house to the State Department in return for wartime loan forgiveness. Even more interesting is the story of Shirley Temple Black, who was there for the Prague Spring in 1968 and the Velvet Revolution in 1989.A well-told story for readers interested in Czechoslovakia, its creation, its fall to fascism and then communism, and rescue from both.

Kirkus Reviews

Jeff Goldblum delivers a unique performance of this intriguing tale about a special house. Whether you like or dislike the result will depend on how you react to Goldblum’s idiosyncratic approach. First, the plot, written by a former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic: It’s an imaginative and engaging account of Europe’s modern history as revealed by a gorgeous Prague mansion, built just after WWI and serially occupied by Czech bankers, Nazi leaders, Russian soldiers, and American diplomats. Goldblum’s performance sounds improvisational, alternately swooping and lingering as if he’s trying out different approaches line by line. His pronunciation of foreign words is labored. And the pitch of his voice often changes mid-sentence. This is Goldblum the quirky, talented actor on display, not Goldblum the narrator. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2018 - AudioFile

Jeff Goldblum delivers a unique performance of this intriguing tale about a special house. Whether you like or dislike the result will depend on how you react to Goldblum’s idiosyncratic approach. First, the plot, written by a former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic: It’s an imaginative and engaging account of Europe’s modern history as revealed by a gorgeous Prague mansion, built just after WWI and serially occupied by Czech bankers, Nazi leaders, Russian soldiers, and American diplomats. Goldblum’s performance sounds improvisational, alternately swooping and lingering as if he’s trying out different approaches line by line. His pronunciation of foreign words is labored. And the pitch of his voice often changes mid-sentence. This is Goldblum the quirky, talented actor on display, not Goldblum the narrator. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2018 - AudioFile