At a glance
Pages576
First published2023
AudienceAdult
ISBN014313289X
LuvemBooks Verdict
Best for: Readers drawn to literary memoir that works simultaneously as cultural history — particularly those interested in mental illness, American meritocracy, the limits of friendship, and the policy failures of late twentieth-century deinstitutionalization.
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The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions is Jonathan Rosen's Pulitzer Prize–finalist memoir reconstructing his lifelong friendship with Michael Laudor — a Yale-educated legal prodigy with paranoid schizophrenia who ultimately killed his pregnant girlfriend, Caroline Costello — while simultaneously delivering a sweeping cultural history of deinstitutionalization and America's self-deceptions about mental illness. Rigorously researched and operating on multiple levels at once, it earned Top 10 Best Book of the Year recognition from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic, and a place on Barack Obama's 2023 favorites list. Readers who prize literary memoir with serious sociological depth will find it essential, though its 576-page scope and unrelenting emotional weight make it a demanding rather than consoling experience.
- Is it worth reading?
- For readers drawn to literary memoir that also functions as cultural history and sociological study, The Best Minds is an essential work. Critical consensus — reflected in a Pulitzer Prize finalist designation, Top 10 Best Book recognition from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Slate, and People, and inclusion among Barack Obama's favorite books of 2023 — is unusually broad and strong. Critics called it "a magisterial work, as much a sociological study of late 20th-century America as it is a book about madness" and "immensely emotional and unforgettably haunting." The key caveat is that at 576 pages, with wide sociological scope and unrelenting emotional weight, it rewards patience rather than offering consolation.
- Similar books
- Readers drawn to The Best Minds often reach for works that combine personal experience with serious inquiry into mental illness and the mind. Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression and Esmé Weijun Wang's The Collected Schizophrenias offer rigorous, first-person accounts of psychiatric illness that share Rosen's blend of memoir and cultural analysis. William Styron's Darkness Visible is a landmark short memoir of severe depression that rewards readers who appreciate literary precision applied to mental suffering. For the thread of intense, defining friendship that structures Rosen's narrative, Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend provides a compelling fictional parallel. Johann Hari's Lost Connections approaches questions of mental health from a systemic, sociological angle reminiscent of Rosen's policy-history passages.
- Who should read this?
- The Best Minds is ideally suited to readers of serious literary memoir who want their personal narrative embedded in genuine cultural and historical analysis. It speaks directly to anyone interested in mental illness — particularly schizophrenia and the policy history of deinstitutionalization — as well as readers drawn to questions of American meritocracy, the limits of friendship, and late twentieth-century intellectual life. The book also rewards those interested in the post-Shoah Jewish intellectual world that shaped both the Rosen and Laudor families. It is not the right book for readers seeking true crime, a tightly focused biography of Michael Laudor, or any form of uplifting resolution.
- About Jonathan Rosen
- Jonathan Rosen is an American author and editor.
- What are the main themes?
- The Best Minds operates on several thematic levels simultaneously. At its most intimate, it is a study of friendship — specifically what one friend can and cannot understand about another's mind, and the limits of loyalty when that mind is overtaken by paranoid schizophrenia. More broadly, it examines deinstitutionalization and the systemic policy failures of late twentieth-century American psychiatry. Critics described its scope as "panoptic," extending to American meritocracy, the rise of predatory capitalism, the long shadow of the Second World War and its intellectual legacy, and what Rosen calls "the danger of stories" — the way narrative itself can become a vehicle for self-deception and destruction.
- What awards and recognition has it received?
- The Best Minds is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and received Top 10 Best Book of the Year designations from five major outlets: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Slate, and People. Kirkus Reviews named it among its Best Books of 2023, calling it "an affecting, thoughtfully written portrait of a friendship broken by mental illness and its terrible sequelae." Barack Obama included it among his favorite books of 2023, reflecting what critics noted as the book's unusually broad reach across both literary and general audiences. Critical coverage called it "brave and nuanced... An act of tremendous compassion and a literary triumph."
Summarize this book
Is it worth reading?
Who should read this?
About Jonathan Rosen
What are the main themes?
What awards and recognition has it received?
Summarize this book
The Best Minds is Jonathan Rosen's memoir of his closest childhood friendship with Michael Laudor, which began when the Rosen family moved to New Rochelle in 1973. Both boys were sons of college professors, both were admitted to Yale, and Laudor blazed through college in three years, graduating summa cum laude — before a serious psychotic break led to a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Even so, Laudor enrolled at Yale Law School while battling delusions, was celebrated in The New York Times as a genius destigmatizing mental illness, and sold a memoir with film rights to Ron Howard — until he stabbed his pregnant girlfriend, Caroline Costello, to death in the grip of a paranoid fantasy. Drawing on court and police records, medical studies, interviews, and diaries, Rosen widens the lens to examine deinstitutionalization, American meritocracy, and the policy failures that shaped Laudor's trajectory.
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Age & Reading Level
Recommended age
Adult
Reading level
Adult
Content to know about
homicide of a pregnant woman
paranoid schizophrenia and psychotic episodes
psychiatric institutionalization
Best for: Adults — the book covers homicide, paranoid schizophrenia, and sustained harrowing subject matter with no consoling resolution
Skip if you want a focused true-crime narrative or a story that offers resolution and consolation
Editorial Review
Jonathan Rosen's memoir The Best Minds is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and a New York Times Top 10 Best Book of 2023 that reconstructs the author's lifelong friendship with Michael Laudor — a Yale-educated legal prodigy diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia who ultimately killed his pregnant girlfriend, Caroline Costello. Drawing on court and police records, medical studies, interviews, and diaries, Rosen widens the lens beyond one devastating story to examine deinstitutionalization, the nature of mental illness, and the self-deceptions of an entire era.
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