Join us for a conversation with Norman Eisen, author of The Last Palace: Europe’s Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House (Penguin Random House).

Norman Eisen is a senior fellow at Brookings, a CNN political commentator, and the chair of the government watchdog group CREW. From 2009 to 2011 he served in the White House as President Obama’s “ethics czar” and from 2011 - 2014 as the U.S. Ambassador to Czech Republic.

Eisen’s book tells the story of liberalism and illiberalism through the lives of the people who preceded him in his ambassadorial residence Petshek Villa in Prague: its Jewish builder, Nazi occupier, post-WWII American savior, and Cold War movie star-ambassador. Interwoven throughout is the story of his mother, a Czech Holocaust survivor who sent him back to Prague to live in the palace once occupied by the Nazis--and was his best advisor as he took on their modern-day successors.

Richard Schlesinger is a correspondent for CBS News and he contributes to Sunday Morning. He previously served as a full-time correspondent for 48 Hours (1990-1997), reporting on a wide range of topics, including innocent Americans behind bars, marriage and divorce in the 1990s and the middle-class recession. Mr. Schlesinger is is the grandson of Otto Petschek, one of the protagonists of The Last Palace.

FREE and public event, please RSVP at Eventbrite.

Suggested donation at door: $5

The event is organized in collaboration with the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association.