The Best Minds

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

De: Jonathan Rosen

Narrado por: 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

Reseñas de la Crítica

"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

Without question, believe the hype.

I rarely write reviews, but feel compelled to note what an extraordinary piece of work this is. Beautifully written and narrated. Informative without being the slightest bit dull. Delicate yet brutally honest when necessary. 16 hours that went by in the blink of an eye. I think a great deal of this is owed to Jonathan Rosen’s narration. In fact, should Rosen ever need a side gig, he’d be wildly successful as an audio book narrator. As to content, every minute is absolutely warranted. To say otherwise is ludicrous, insensitive at best and an insult at worst. The Best Minds is a magnificent read/listen. Highly recommend. Should you need further convincing, see Alexandra Jacobs’ review in The NY Times. Spot-on.

Fascinating and Deeply Moving

One of the most intellectually stimulating and tragically moving books I've ever read. I believe the author is about 15 years my junior but he lit up many of my most powerful literary, cinematic, and societal memories of the late twentieth century A deeply enriching experience.

EXCELLENT!!! Read this book!

I expected a story about a friend who suffers from severe schizophrenia. It is this, but much more. The author narrates the history of mental illness and treatment. Fascinating.

Having worked with severely mentally ill people since 1986, I thought I had a good handle on the issues. The author outlines much more, & in an interesting manner.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this book!

Part of an essential reading list...

Before listening to this book, I listened to "The Center Cannot Hold" (Saks) and read "No One Cares About Crazy People" (Powers). I am a student of psychology with a background in law. I recommend all three books as some of the best personal accounts of schizophrenia.

Heartbreaking

This is an amazing piece. It is wonderfully and respectfully told by the author, clearly well-researched, but still comes to a heartbreaking conclusion. It is a must read for everyone. We should all understand a little better what it is to live with mental illness, the ramifications of looking the other way, and how our society is equipped to handle mental illness.

Breathtaking. Vital.

Well read - deserves all of its praise and deeply meaningful for those touch by schizophrenia.

Best book this year

I enjoyed everything about this book. it took me through the years I grew up, the music, the news stories, the feelings of the time. But my favorite part was the changes and philosophy about mental illness. excellent read.

Real life story

This a well written and well narrated book about our society’s shortcomings how to deal with mental health that affects all of us in many ways on daily basis.

As beautiful as is it heart-breaking

The writing is so lovely that you'll likely need to pause multiple times just to save her one line or another.

It's unflinching and honest and a portrait of the devastation of mental illness. It's also a wonderful snapshot of a generational moment in time. I only wish Rosen wrote more frequently.

The Overwhelming Tragedy of Mental Illness

I grew up in a family that suffered with severe mental illness. My sister had her first psychotic break in her second year of college. She was a brilliant young woman studying nursing. An excellent student, and so committed and compassionate. Nine years older than I, five years older than my brother, we had no idea where we were all headed. Typical middle class family in a suburb outside of Chicago. She was born in ‘42.
When she ‘fell’ I really didn’t understand, nor, unfortunately, did my parents, her teachers, or even the doctors who initially dealt with her. Schizophrenia was not even a term that anyone used for years. ‘Nervous breakdown’ was what they called it. She was hospitalized for a short time, came home, and then the reality that she couldn’t complete her education at this esteemed university. She was in and out of every type of hospital, psychiatric care center, state institution, private, public, and her ‘resume’ could probably be an outline for public health care policy for decades.
I see now how the political winds blew her and millions of others out into the abyss or perhaps occasionally sent her a life boat. But all that went on behind countless curtains rendered her into a different self. And a different self again.
We were part of it all. As this author so aptly described it, as a stone tossed into a lake, we were ripples, our extended family were ripples, neighbors, doctors, lawyers, ripples and ripples, and more ripples.
Every time my sister returned home from her hospitals/homes she was a variation on the theme (s). A new diagnosis, new medications, new protocols.
In between these confinements she inevitably would run away. Sometimes disappearing for days, or months, sometimes for years. I recall when my mother was in the hospital for some reason, we received a phone call from the Belgian police. They were remarkable. They helped us get her home.
I recall times we had to call the police, or an ambulance to deal with the escalating crisis in our home. I came to believe that this was how it was. I left home for college and dreaded coming back. My brother left for college and never came back.
Reality still hasn’t been resolved for the heartbreaking mystery of severe mental illness. I’m sure there are many new medications and theories and methods now. I am talking about the 60’s, and the 70’s and the ‘effects’ of her ‘treatments’ created layers of illness beyond the original.
She finally found a group home that was a good fit for her. She lived there for a
few years and seemed pretty stable. She died unexpectedly when she was 69 years old. I am older than that now.
It was so sad. My mom and dad were both gone by then. And all I could think was how much I mourned her life. I couldn’t even consider how to mourn her death.

The striking thing in this book, besides all the details about the suffering, was when the author pointed out that with any disease, researchers can create an illness in a rat or mouse, and then figure out how to cure it.
There is no way to give a laboratory rodent a disconnected mind…. and then….
Regardless of whether mental illness has ever darkened your door, it will darken the door of someone you know, probably someone you love. No vaccines exist. All we can do is be aware, be patient, be compassionate, and try to be informed best we can.
I’m so grateful to Jonathan Rosen for this book. Halfway through it, I checked the reviews in Goodreads and was truly disappointed by the reviews and the criticism of his motives. The remarks about his style being too ‘wordy’ and ‘too many details’!
Clearly, these people had never been ‘ripples’. Regardless of his ‘motives’ he was a part of this tragedy. Even if he escaped the worst of it, he was touched, or better yet, scarred. Regardless of his awareness of that.
I hope every person considers reading this book.
One never knows if and when they might be a ripple in a sad and confusing world.