bookshelf

THE LAST PALACE

Name: THE LAST PALACE
Author: Norman Eisen
ISBN: 978-0-451-49578-5

EUROPE'S TURBULENT CENTURY IN FIVE LIVES AND ONE LEGENDARY HOUSE

by Norman Eisen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018

A well-told story for readers interested in Czechoslovakia, its creation, its fall to fascism and then communism, and rescue...

bookshelf

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, torn 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.

Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-451-49578-5

Page Count: 528

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: June 26, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018

Categories:

bookshelf

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

bookshelf

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

bookshelf

NIGHT

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

bookshelf

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance.