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.

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.

Well done on all aspects

I thought this book was thoughtful, carefully written, wistful, interesting, heartbreaking, a little humorous, unbelievable, fascinating and gut wrenching. Well narrated by the Author himself. I highly recommend this book. Gives an excellent personal story of mental illness while also putting it in context of the history of the treatment of the mentally ill in this country. Like I said, heartbreaking.

Gripping

Even though you know the horrible event that lies ahead, this book grabs you by the lapels and does not let go. We've all known someone who suffered from mental illness and how the pain is spread to all of those within their circle. Jonathan Rosen beautifully articulates what it is like to see someone you know make that terrible descent.

Thorough, thoughtful and necessary

Rosen did a wonderful job of telling a number of different stories about important topics, including the tragedy of Michael Lauder, the history of mental illness, and truly all of the intentions of those involved and/or impacted by serious mental illness. In addition, I learned a lot, even though some of the references are straight out of the Ivy League. I found myself searching and learning even more about so many aspects of the book. What a gift . If you care about the history of mental illness or of you care about someone with a serious mental illness, give this book the time it deserves.

Brilliant

A tragic, beautiful, riveting and heartbreakingly personal story of schizophrenia. Excellent narration by the author.