PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • Named a Top 10 Best Book of the Year by The New York Times The
Wall Street Journal The Atlantic Slate and People One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books
of 2023 “Brave and nuanced . . . an act of tremendous compassion and a literary triumph.” —
The New York Times “Immensely emotional and unforgettably haunting.” —The Wall Street Journal
Acclaimed author Jonathan Rosen’s haunting investigation of the forces that led his closest
childhood friend Michael Laudor from the heights of brilliant promise to the forensic
psychiatric hospital where he has lived since killing the woman he loved. A story about
friendship love and the price of self-delusion The Best Minds explores the ways in which we
understand—and fail to understand—mental illness. When the Rosens moved to New Rochelle in
1973 Jonathan Rosen and Michael Laudor became inseparable. Both children of college professors
the boys were best friends and keen competitors and when they both got into Yale University
seemed set to join the American meritocratic elite. Michael blazed through college in three
years graduating summa cum laude and landing a top-flight consulting job. But all wasn’t as it
seemed. One day Jonathan received the call: Michael had suffered a serious psychotic break and
was in the locked ward of a psychiatric hospital. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia
Michael was still battling delusions when he traded his halfway house for Yale Law School.
Featured in The New York Times as a role model genius he sold a memoir with film rights to
Ron Howard. But then Michael in the grip of an unshakeable paranoid fantasy stabbed his
girlfriend Carrie to death and became a front-page story of an entirely different sort.
Tender funny and harrowing by turns The Best Minds is Jonathan Rosen’s magnificent and
heartbreaking account of good intentions and tragic outcomes whose significance will echo
widely.