Norman Eisen

Norman Eisen

Norman Eisen (Norman L. Eisen) was born on November 11th, 1960 and is currently 65 years old. Norman Eisen was born in Los Angeles, CA, USA. Eisen attended Brown University where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree and Harvard Law School where he received a Juris Doctor degree.

Norman Eisen is an author, former diplomat, and attorney. He’s a CNN legal analyst, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, and the co-founder of the States United Democracy Center.

Norman was co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment and trial of President Donald Trump in 2020. He served as White House Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform, board chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and United States Ambassador to the Czech Republic.

Norman worked as the assistant director of the Los Angeles office of the Anti-Defamation League from 1985 to 1988 between college and law school. He investigated antisemitism and other civil rights violations, promoting Holocaust education, and he advanced U. S.-Israel relations.

After graduating from Harvard in 1991, he practiced law in Washington for over 18 years with the Zuckerman Spaeder law firm. He was named one of the top attorneys in Washington by Washingtonian magazine. Norman’s specialty was investigating complex financial fraud, including Enron, Refco, the ADM antitrust case, and the subprime financial collapse.

He was active in the presidential campaign of Barack Obama (his law school classmate) from 2007 to 2009 before he joined the transition team of then-President-elect Obama as his deputy counsel. Obama named him special counsel for ethics and government reform in the White House on January 20, 2009.

The Last Palace: Europe’s Turbulent Century in Five Lives and One Legendary House is an intimate yet sweeping narrative about the last century of turbulent European history, as seen through one of Mitteleuropa’s greatest houses, and its occupants’ lives.

Norman moved into the US ambassador’s residence in Prague, going back to the land his mom fled after the Holocaust, he was startled to find swastikas hidden under the furniture in his new home. These symbols of Nazi Germany were remnants of the residence’s forgotten history, and evidence that we’re never that far from the past.

From this discovery unspooled the captivating and twisting story of 4 of the remarkable people that called this palace home. Their story is Europe and this book chronicles the upheavals which transformed the continent over the previous century. There was Otto Petschek (the optimistic Jewish financial baron) who built the palace after World War I as a statement of his faith in democracy. Laurence Steinhardt (the first postwar US ambassador), Rudolf Toussaint (the compromised German general occupying the palace during World War II), and Shirley Temple Black, who witnessed the crushing of the 1968 Prague Spring by Soviet tanks.

This tells the surprisingly cyclical and dramatic story of the triumph of liberal democracy.

Norman Eisen: Lists & Other Mentions

• The Last Palace was the Jewish Book Council Book Club Non-Fiction June 2019 Pick.

Related Authors

Fans of Norman Eisen also enjoy these authors:

1. Dennis Lehane, author of: Shutter Island.
2. Erik Larson, author of: The Devil in the White City.
3. Ken Follett, author of the Kingsbridge Series.
4. Laura Lippman, author of the Tess Monaghan Series.
5. Anthony Horowitz, author of the Susan Ryeland Series.

Norman Eisen: F.A.Q