Jonathan Rosen is the author of two novels: Eve’s Apple and Joy Comes in the Morning, and two non-fiction books: The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey Between Worlds and The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature. His essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous anthologies. He lives with his family in New York City.
“Brave and nuanced . . . The Best Minds is too a thoughtfully
built, deeply sourced indictment of a society that prioritizes
profit, quick fixes and happy endings over the long slog of care .
. . Effectively taking over his friend’s unfinished project,
braiding it with his own story of clinical anxiety as well as
skeins of history, medicine, religion and true crime, the author
has transcended childhood rivalry by twinning their stories, an act
of tremendous compassion and a literary triumph.” —The New York
Times
“Immensely emotional and unforgettably haunting.” —The Wall Street
Journal
“Haunting . . . Rosen tells this story with such a keen mix of
compassion and eloquence we can’t help but hope there will be a
twist that somehow saves everyone from the inevitably heartbreaking
outcome . . . Throughout the book—which is part memoir, part
manifesto—Rosen asks uncomfortable but crucial questions, some of
them unanswerable, all of them compelling, and the result is an
incisive but intimate tour de force that’s as much about Michael’s
story as it is about the stories we tell as a culture—what we
value, what we see, and what we do our best not to see even when
it’s right in front of us . . . Masterful.” —The Washington
Post
“This engrossing memoir centers on the author’s childhood friend
Michael Laudor, who developed schizophrenia and, in his thirties,
committed a horrific murder . . . Rosen thoughtfully interweaves
this story with an account of changing attitudes toward mental
illness.” —The New Yorker
“Jonathan Rosen’s The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness,
and the Tragedy of Good Intentions takes its title from Allen
Ginsberg’s Howl, and could end up as just as enduring a work of
American writing. Expect to see it on ‘Best Of’ lists, and plan to
make space for its nearly 600 pages on your shelf. A memoir, a love
letter, and a biblical tragedy all at once, it avoids easy answers
but clings to difficult questions. A tale told with humility, it
charts the path to hell by noting every good intention along the
way.” —The New York Sun
“A shattering narrative.” —Sue Halpern, Yale Alumni Magazine
“It’s the darkest of literary triumphs, and the most gripping of
unbearable reads.” —Simon Ings, The Telegraph (Five stars)
“Dazzling . . . both a breathtaking and tragic portrait of a man
with vast potential and a reckoning on how schizophrenia is treated
and understood. This is a tough one to forget.” —Publisher’s Weekly
(starred review)
“Rosen is a novelist, and his literary imagination shapes the book
like a novel...This artful, reflective and even entertaining
book—one of the best of this or any year—is his powerful effort to
take responsibility for changing minds, to persuade us of the
danger of allowing compassion to obscure truth. The Best Minds
manages to honor both.” —Elaine Showalter, Times Literary
Supplement
“[A] well-written, affecting account.” —Booklist
“Intelligent, absorbing and heartbreaking, an intensely personal
story. —Kevin Canfield, CrimeReads
“Rosen captures many worlds in this attentive, nuanced narrative,
evoking boyhood discovery, the life of post-Shoah Jews in America,
the rise of predatory capitalism, and the essential inability of
one friend to comprehend fully the 'delicate brain' of the other.
It’s an undeniably tragic story, but Rosen also probes meaningfully
into the nature of mental illness. Throughout, he is keenly
sensitive, as when he writes of the perils of self-awareness, ‘The
flip side of the idea that writing heals you, perhaps, was the fear
that failing to tell your story, and fulfill your dreams, cast you
into outer darkness.’ An affecting, thoughtfully written portrait
of a friendship broken by mental illness and its terrible
sequelae.” —Kirkus (starred review)
“An astounding piece of work, at once a portrait of Laudor made of
countless fine brush strokes, a tender memoir of adolescence and
young adulthood and, above all, a forensic, unflinching exploration
of the factors that led to Laudor's public rise and bloody fall.”
—Ben Machell, The Times
“[An] excruciating, riveting memoir . . . The Best Minds is an
absorbing story of one man's tragic life. But it is also an
important examination of how much we know and can do — and, more
crucially, how little.” —Star Tribune
“Heart-rending. . . Almost every page is filled with poignant
observations, subtle ironies and a commentary pregnant with the
unbearable weight of future knowledge. There are tragic echoes of
The Great Gatsby.” —Andrew Anthony, Observer
“An ‘American tragedy’ but one with universal relevance, The Best
Minds combines a tender and touching story of friendship with a
brutal indictment of how we neglect the mentally ill in our society
at our peril.” —Caroline Sanderson, Editor's choice, The
Bookseller
“This book gets you in its grip from the first pages. It is the
opposite of a magic trick: nothing is hidden but the revelations
are constantly stunning, a testament to Jonathan Rosen’s sheer
skill as an author. The Best Minds is a heartbreaking story and an
astonishing work of art, its tragedy rendered with unbounded
humanity and depth.” —Stephen J. Dubner, host of Freakonomics
Radio
“With bracing honesty, Jonathan Rosen tackles one of medicine’s
greatest mysteries, the origins and outcomes of maladies of the
mind. In artful prose and with a compassionate voice, he takes us
on a journey from childhood to academia to locked institutions. Not
always easy to read but well worth it, The Best Minds is a work of
nuance and insight that triggers thought and pulls at the heart.”
—Jerome Groopman, MD, Recanati Professor Harvard Medical School;
author of How Doctors Think; coauthor of Your Medical Mind (with
Dr. Pamela Hartzband)
“In this riveting narrative, Jonathan Rosen guides us through his
lifelong friendship with Michael Laudor, a young boy of exceptional
promise who becomes a young man exceptionally ill with
schizophrenia. This cautionary tale reminds us that schizophrenia
is a formidable foe. For even the best minds, the illness can be
devastating, subverting its own treatment. And for those who love
someone afflicted with schizophrenia, our best instincts for
compassion and accommodation can lead to dire consequences. But The
Best Minds is not only about genius and madness. It is about how
all of us approach what we can’t understand and how each of must do
better for those who can’t fend for themselves.” —Thomas Insel, MD,
former director, National Institute of Mental Health and author of
Healing
“A moving evocation of childhood friendship that morphs into a
devastating evocation of mental illness. Rosen is persistently
judicious and precise. The result is a harrowing tour de force.”
—Peter D. Kramer, author of Death of the Great Man and Listening to
Prozac
“This is that rare book that deftly works on several levels at once
while remaining a compulsive read: as a narrative of a complex
friendship; a cautionary tale about the price of intellectual
ambition; and a clash between the unholy alliance of psychoanalytic
and literary theory and the grim vicissitudes of reality. Jonathan
Rosen writes with searing intelligence and admirable candor about
his role in what is ultimately a heartrending story. As
unobtrusively researched as it is deeply reflective, informed
by a humane and comprehending voice, The Best Minds delivers on its
own vaulting ambition. It is nothing short of a contemporary
masterpiece.” —Daphne Merkin, author of 22 Minutes of Unconditional
Love and This Close to Happy
“I am not sure when I last read a nonfiction book as satisfying as
The Best Minds. It's a memoir, a medical mystery, the story of
a close male friendship, a clear-eyed look at the criminal
justice system, and, in a weird way, an academic satire, revealing
Ivy League foibles that would make you laugh if they didn't make
you tear your hair out, painfully. Jonathan Rosen has written a
long book that felt too short; I wanted it to keep going and
going.” —Mark Oppenheimer, author of Squirrel Hill
“The Best Minds is one of the best books about mental illness I
have ever read. Its grand sweep takes in the nuanced cultural
history of ideas and policies regarding people with severe illness.
Andrew Solomon’s The Noonday Demon did this for depression, and
Scott Stossel’s My Age of Anxiety for anxiety. Those books, both
superb, are grounded in memoir as well, but the specific horror of
Rosen’s makes it especially unforgettable.” —Sally Satel,
Commentary Magazine
“The Best Minds is a carefully crafted and beautifully written tale
illustrating the failure of our mental illness treatment system.
The irony of the title is that the ‘best minds’ did not understand
that paranoid schizophrenia is a brain disease, not a behavioral
choice. On any given day 40 percent of the 9 million Americans with
serious psychiatric disorders are receiving no treatment. The
Laudor story, with elements of the Ivy League and Hollywood, was
high-profile but other tragedies quietly occur in the US every
day.” —E. Fuller Torrey, MD, author of American Psychosis: How the
Federal Government Destroyed the Mental Illness Treatment
System
"I was gripped from the start by Jonathan Rosen’s skill as a
novelist as he tells the story of two boys, both alike in dignity
and gifts, and the tragic impact of severe mental illness on their
different life trajectories. The book is a kind of lighthouse,
pointing out the dangers ahead if we don’t pay attention to those
small number of people with severe mental illness, who pose a risk
to others, and who need long term care from professionals: not from
desperate families and partners. It is a must-read for those who
are interested in mental health services, and should be required
for those in government who have any influence on mental health
policy. The Best Minds has its own strange and terrible beauty, and
despite the tragedy described therein, it is also a tribute to
human love and hope for better things." —Gwen Adshead, forensic
psychiatrist and author of The Devil You Know
“A work of intimacy, scope and sweeping power, this epic book reads
like a classic American novel. Both a heart-rending tragedy and a
story of love and companionship, The Best Minds is utterly
compelling.” —Seán Hewitt, author of All Down Darkness Wide
“As a primer to the cultural and political concerns that emerged
from the Sixties, it is second to none ... Like all great American
texts it is the detail and the flow of ideas that gives it power.
This is social and intellectual history of the most powerful sort.”
—Brian Morton, The Tablet
“Incredibly moving and panoramic work . . . Rosen’s writing can
break your heart . . . A worthy and incisive read.” —New York
Journal of Books
“Deeply personal, by turns sad, angry, empathetic, and, yes, funny,
“The Best Minds” is a must-read account of the manifestations and
mysteries of psychosis and the failures of our nation’s mental
health institutions.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“This devastating memoir will break your heart . . . In The Best
Minds, Rosen breaks his silence, and the heart of any empathetic
reader. It is a wrenching double memoir about converging and
violently diverging lives.” —The Forward
“To say that this is a memoir, a case study, or a book about
schizophrenia is to dramatically undersell it. Though Rosen’s lens
is particular, his view is panoptic. This is a magisterial work, as
much a sociological study of late 20th-century America as it is a
book about madness. It is also a book about childhood and
friendship, the long shadow of the second world war and its
unexpected intellectual legacy, about ambition and delusion and the
danger of stories.” —David Shariatmadari, The Guardian
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