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 PeopleOne of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of
2023Brave and nuanced . . . an act of tremendous compassion and a literary triumph.” —The New
York TimesImmensely emotional and unforgettably haunting.” —The Wall Street JournalAcclaimed
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.
