The Last Palace: Finding Hope in History

I was lucky enough to obtain the galleys of Norman Eisen’s new book, The Last Palace: Europe’s Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House.  On his popular twitter feed, Eisen says that the book offers “reasons for hope.”  And it’s true — in these dark days for American democracy, the long view that Eisen offers is both healing and energizing.

The book is, in a  word, terrific.  I toted it along on my end-of-summer trip, thinking that it would provide good airport reading.  Instead, I couldn’t put it down and finished it in just three days.   Eisen weaves personal stories from his time as the U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic with a history of the Ambassador’s residence — the “last palace” built in Europe — and the residents who preceded him.  The book is thoroughly researched, but it hardly reads like an academic tome.  Rather, Eisen’s writing is vivid and engaging, and the stories that he has to tell are important and illuminating.  The through-lines are the house itself, and Eisen’s own family story.  His mother, an Austrian Jew, survived the Holocaust  and eventually emigrated to America.  She resists visiting her son in the Ambassador’s residence, and  it’s no wonder — the “last palace” was built by a prominent Austrian Jewish family, but it then served as the Nazi headquarters for Prague during WWII before the U.S. acquired the residence.  A poignant detail is the swastika that Eisen finds stamped on some of the furniture still in the palace.

Eisen, who worked at his family’s hamburger stand throughout his youth, sees his appointment as Ambassador to the country that his mother once fled as evidence that democratic values will out in the end.  His mother is proud of her son, but not is so sure that he is drawing the right conclusions.  In a way, the book is Eisen’s effort to use history to convince his mother of his view — and that gives it a personal urgency that adds immensely to the book’s flow and interest. 

Norman Eisen has been busy since the last presidential election, as a founding member of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which has initiated many legal actions in an effort to maintain the rule of law in government.  This book, however, takes a different tack, using history to demonstrate the power of human rights and to offer hope for the future.