The Best Minds

A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions

By: Jonathan Rosen

Narrated by: Jonathan Rosen

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.

©2023 Jonathan Rosen (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"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

“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

Excellent Work

I recommended this book to my family as a "well-cut gem," and so it is. I found it enlightening, comforting, and heartbreaking all at once. One can feel the care Mr. Rosen put into every word. Mr. Rosen is also an excellent narrator, infusing an already personal book with yet more depth of understanding. If you want to know more about the failures of the mental health care in America, the philosophical and political movements that led to its incapacity, and the effects of schizophrenia on both its sufferers and the people around them, this is for you.

Outstanding

As a founding member of the Community for Creative Nonviolence in Washington DC, Jonathan Rosen’s brilliant representation of the reality of de-institutionalization and its profound effect on his friend , Michael Laudor , his family,friends and his wife , Caroline Costello’s friends and family, to name a few … is a must read for anyone who is interested or cares about the “ un-housed” community that lives on our streets today . Thank you , Jonathan

Compelling!

Insightful, empathetic, heartfelt, takes the whole story from multiples sides & explains the context of the times. We can & should do so much better for our members of society with mental health issues. Our laws and the special needs of each of our community members can & should be more logically considered.

The tragedy of the mental health system

I liked the beginning and the end, it was a messy transition in the middle.

Beautifully Tragic and Compassionate Story

This book is beautifully written. And the author’s voice is comforting while telling a story that changed so many lives including his, in tragic ways. A must read & listen!

It's difficult to articulate just how great this book is.

As a parent with a child suffering this awful brain disease, i can relate to so much of this book. As always, hindsight skews the reality faced in the moment, and mercifully erases associated trauma [some of the time]. Bravo to the Author, and thank you!

Narration flowed well

Wish there were more about what happened after the subject was institutionalized; i.e., wish the author had brought the story more current

An Important Book

I was very touched by this book. It was particularly poignant to me as a son of a paranoid schizophrenic person.

I lived through periods when my parent was not well and it was impossible to get assistance for her because of the philosophical, social, and political changes documented in this book.

Perhaps it struck me even more as a former lawyer who struggled though the complexities an impossible equities of prosecuting and defending mentally I’ll people.

Slightly older than the author and Michael, the story of their youth reminded me of mine in another Jewish neighborhood, Forest Hills.

Finally, I would just remark that the obvious collapse of my of our cities, and the continuing collapse of our criminal justice system are tied to what is destroying our country.

While the mental health system desperately needed reform, it didn’t need what has occurred, the practical abandonment of the mentally ill, to the streets, jail, and prison.

Perhaps the awareness of these things provided by this book may lead to change and humane reform.

It's just too long

its amazing that the author can take such a long time to say so little! It's like he couldn't decide whether this was going to be a heartfelt memoir or a sociology of mental illness and so it ended up being neither.

I know why this book is popular among advocates

This story is exceptionally detailed in its telling of a true story told in a way that only a gifted writer could tell. I appreciate the author’s awareness and research into the complicated nature and the far reaching effects that mental illnesses played in his friends life. To the author: thanks for narrating your book.