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. … 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.
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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.
Moving, engaging, and elegantly written, The Last Palace wears its erudition lightly, casts its radiant intelligence fearlessly into the darkest corners of the twentieth century and, effortlessly, reliably, breaks your heart again and again.
Combining both the personal and the historical, Norman Eisen’s remarkable book transports us into the battle for democracy through the lives of people who fought to save it and those who would seek to destroy it. The Last Palace is not only a first-rate work of history, but a call to action written at a time of urgent need.
Norman Eisen pulls back the curtains to reveal history’s secrets in this rich, personal, and wise book.
At a time when we find ourselves newly nostalgic for courageous public officials and American leadership on behalf of human rights, Eisen has written a pearl of a book. Using an ornate palace in Prague as the backdrop for his fast-paced narrative, Eisen tells the tale of the last stormy century through the eyes of several vibrant characters who helped shape it — from a stubborn businessman who, Willy Wonka-like, builds an implausibly ornate palace as war clouds loom; to Shirley Temple Black, the Czech-American envoy who acts decisively in the side of dissidents during the Velvet Revolution; to Eisen himself, who, as Obama’s ambassador to the Czech Republic, raises his voice on behalf of human rights amid growing populism and extremism. The Last Palace is a great read and a stirring reminder of the importance of decency in public life.
The Last Palace is a great piece of work: a compelling story and so elegantly written. A wonderful read.
A wonderful history of an iconic palace, and its role in Czech history and U.S. ambassadors.
Well written and interesting history.
All the thru I had the feeling of ‘if these walls could speak’…!! Very interesting characters and fills in some gaps in my reading of history. Found the story and the writing to be engaging and well paced.
I love Prague and the history in the book is fantastic.
If you’ve ever been to Prague, or would like to visit Prague, this is a terrific book to put so many of the city’s amazing sites into 20th century context.
I took a chance on this book and boy was it a wonderful surprise. It was packed full of history and written in and easy to follow line. I loved learning about the house and the history.
I found the story told by Ambassador Norman Eisen in THE LAST PALACE fascinating for a number of reasons. Perhaps chief among them is the fact that I lived, for the first twelve years of my life, less than ten miles from this place—one known as “the last palace constructed in Europe”—totally unaware of its existence. Otto Petschek, an assimilated and wealthy Czech Jew (much like the Jewish side of my own family), devoted much of his fortune to building an architectural marvel on a hillside in Prague. He furnished it with expensive furniture, decorations, and valuable books. He micromanaged the entire process, including the landscaping, despite red tape and resentment by both the bureaucracy and many of the capital city’s citizens.
While the author’s telling of the building of Petschek’s legendary palace is fascinating, it is Eisen’s use of the grand mansion as an eye through which the reader sees the tortured history of my native country, the former Czechoslovakia, that makes this book great. He does this masterfully by following the lives of five inhabitants of the last palace.
First, of course, is the family of Otto Petschek. Following the occupation in 1939, the mansion was occupied by the Germans’ military attaché, Rudolf Toussaint, a Wehrmacht officer who walked a fine line between appeasing his Nazi bosses and his own feelings as a decent human being. Eisen’s meticulously researched book makes use of Toussaint’s tenure in the palace to describe life in Prague during more than six years of German occupation. Although I was hidden as a child outside of Prague during that time, and thought I knew a great deal about those times, I learned a great deal more by reading THE LAST PALACE.
The third occupant of the palace was U.S. Ambassador, Laurence Steinhardt, who moved in at the end of World War II and protected the house and its contents from ignorant, brutal soldiers of the Red Army, the new occupants of Prague. Even more importantly, the book describes Steinhardt’s unsuccessful attempts to save democratic Czechoslovakia from a Communist take-over.
Shirley Temple Black happened to be in Prague in August 1968, during what turned out to be the last days of Prague Spring. She witnessed the invasion by Warsaw Pact armies and, as a result, the former child star became determined to return someday as an American diplomat and to help the Czechs overthrow their latest oppressors. She did so when the elder President Bush named her Ambassador to Czechoslovakia. With the U.S. now owning the Petschek Palace, she became its newest occupant and, as such, provided support to dissidents who led the Velvet Revolution of 1989.
The book begins and ends with the author himself being named Ambassador to the Czech Republic by President Obama. Throughout its 360 pages, Eisen weaves in the story of his mother, Frieda, a Czech Jewish girl who dreamed of becoming a doctor before the Germans transported her to Auschwitz. She survived and immigrated to America, only to see her son become Ambassador to her native country. Her trepidation, mistrust, and resistance to even paying a visit to Prague reminded me of the feelings of my own mother following our immigration to the United States.
THE LAST PALACE is a wonderful book. It is meticulously researched and beautifully written—combining human drama with historical fact. I recommend it as highly as is possible.
What a revelation! With this moving memoir and history, Norman Eisen enters the front rank of writers. A truly riveting read.