ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2023ONE OF THE GUARDIAN AND PROSPECT'S BEST BOOKS OF
THE YEAR ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES ATLANTIC AND WALL STREET JOURNAL'S TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE
YEAR'Extraordinary... Magisterial... A remarkable meditation on friendship success madness
and violence that refuses to oversimplify' Guardian (Book of the Day)'The darkest of literary
triumphs and the most gripping of unbearable reads' Telegraph (5 stars)A novelist's gripping
investigation of the forces that led his childhood best friend from academic stardom to the
psychiatric hospital where he has lived since killing the woman he lovedWhen the Rosens moved
to New Rochelle New York in 1973 Jonathan Rosen and Michael Laudor became inseparable. Both
children of professors the boys were best friends and fierce rivals who soon followed each
other to Yale University.Michael blazed through Yale in three years graduating summa cum laude
and landing a top-flight consulting job. Then one day Jonathan received a devastating call:
Michael had suffered a psychotic break and was in the locked ward of a psychiatric
hospital.Diagnosed with schizophrenia Michael was still in hospital when he learned he'd been
accepted to Yale Law School and living in a halfway house when he decided against all odds
to enroll. Still battling delusions he managed to graduate and after his triumphant story was
featured in The New York Times sold a memoir for a vast sum. Ron Howard bought film rights
completing the dream for Michael and his tirelessly supportive girlfriend Carrie and Brad Pitt
was set to star. But then Michael in the grip of psychosis committed a horrific act that made
him a front-page story of an entirely different sort.The Best Minds is Jonathan Rosen's
powerful account of an American tragedy set in the final decades of the American century an
era that coincided with the emptying out of state mental hospitals. It is a story about the
bonds of friendship the price of delusion and the mystery of identity. Tender funny and
harrowing by turns The Best Minds is both a beautifully rendered coming of age story and an
indictment of the profound neglect of mental illness in our society.
