Norman L. Eisen

When Eisen moved into the US ambassador's residence in Prague, he was startled to discover swastikas hidden beneath the furniture. As he unspooled the twisting, captivating tale of some of the remarkable people who had called this palace home, he began to chronicle the upheavals that transformed the continent over the past century. He introduces us to optimistic Jewish financial baron, Otto Petschek, who built the palace after World War I; Rudolf Toussaint, the cultured, compromised German general who occupied the palace during World War II; Laurence Steinhardt, the first postwar US ambassador; and Shirley Temple Black, an eyewitness to the crushing of the 1968 Prague Spring who returned as US ambassador in 1989. -- adapted from jacket

Europe's turbulent century in five lives and one legendary house

The last palace

A behind-the-scenes look at how the United States aided the Velvet Revolution Democracy’s Defenders offers a behind-the-scenes account of the little-known role played by the U.S. embassy in Prague in the collapse of communism in what was then Czechoslovakia. Featuring fifty-two newly declassified diplomatic cables, the book shows how the staff of the embassy led by U.S. Ambassador Shirley Temple Black worked with dissident groups and negotiated with the communist government during a key period of the Velvet Revolution that freed Czechoslovakia from Soviet rule. In the vivid reporting of these cables, Black and other members of the U.S. diplomatic corps in Prague describe student demonstrations and their meetings with anti-government activists. The embassy also worked to forestall a violent crackdown by the communist regime during its final months in power. Edited by Norman L. Eisen, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014, Democracy’s Defenders contributes fresh evidence to the literature on U.S. diplomatic history, the cold war era, and American promotion of democracy overseas. In an introductory essay, Eisen places the diplomatic cables in context and analyzes their main themes. In an afterword, Eisen, Czech historian Dr. Mikuláš Pešta, and Brookings researcher Kelsey Landau explain how the seeds of democracy that the United States helped plant have grown in the decades since the Velvet Revolution. The authors trace a line from U.S. efforts to promote democracy and economic liberalization after the Velvet Revolution to the contemporary situations of what are now the separate nations of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Norman L. Eisen

About

Books

Join the club