Named a Top 10 Best Book of the Year by One of Barack Obama''s Favorite Books of 2023 “Brave and nuanced…an act of tremendous compassion and a literary triumph.” “Immensely emotional and unforgettably haunting.” 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, 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 in the hospital when he learned he''d been accepted to Yale Law School, and still battling delusions when he decided to trade his halfway house for the top law school in the country. He not only managed to graduate, but after his extraordinary story was featured in <The Best Minds< is Jonathan Rosen''s brilliant and heartbreaking account of an American tragedy. It is a story about the bonds of family, friendship, and community; the promise of intellectual achievement; and the lure of utopian solutions. Tender, funny, and harrowing by turns, at times almost unbearably sad, <The Best Minds< is an extreme version of a story that is tragically familiar to all too many. In the hands of a writer of Jonathan Rosen''s gifts and dedication, its significance will echo widely....

Autorentext

Jonathan Rosen