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  • The Best Minds

  • A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions
  • By: Jonathan Rosen
  • Narrated by: Jonathan Rosen
  • Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (14 ratings)

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The Best Minds

By: Jonathan Rosen
Narrated by: Jonathan Rosen
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Publisher's Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

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 loved.

When 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.

©2023 Jonathan Rosen (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critic Reviews

"A beautifully written meditation on society's inability to cope with the problem of mental illness." (Gal Beckerman)

"This book gets you in its grip from the first pages. It is the opposite of a magic trick: nothing is hidden but the revelations are constantly stunning, a testament to Jonathan Rosen's sheer skill as an author. The Best Minds is a heartbreaking story and an astonishing work of art, its tragedy rendered with unbounded humanity and depth." (Stephen J. Dubner)

"A work of intimacy, scope and sweeping power, this epic book reads like a classic American novel. Both a heart-rending tragedy and a story of love and companionship, The Best Minds is utterly compelling." (Seán Hewitt)

What listeners say about The Best Minds

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stunning

An incredibly detailed account of the author's experiences and how his life intersected with a person experiencing severe mental illness. I enjoyed his passion and very well thought out discussion around the challenges of treatment inaccessibility, denial and the potential for violence in SMI. Thank you for this book. sincerely, a person diagnosed with and medicated for psychosis

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Remarkable account of the trajectory of a friendship

Loved everything about this extraordinary book. Definitely one I will listen to again in the future

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Brilliant and empathic

An insightful and respectful re-telling of a horrible tragedy, and the failure of the systems and appropriate care that should be in place to protect the vulnerable people our governments continually fail.

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