2024 the best. review

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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.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books (April 16, 2024)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 576 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 014313289X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0143132899
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.47 x 1.22 x 8.37 inches
Reviewer: Candid Car
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Highly informative and well written!
Review: One of the very BEST books that I have ever read. Highly intelligent, informative, honest and an extremely well written true storie. A perfect example of how we clearly make devastating mistakes with our good intentions, and the possible results. Rosen writes a true story experience, with accuracy, and memorable timely associations, creating a good trip into the past. Written with humility and also a vast experience of descriptive vocabulary! This book will remain within your own analyzing thoughts and possible misinterpretations of someone you may know.

Reviewer: Snuffles1
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Madness!
Review: My mother was a schizophrenic so I am always drawn to these kinds of books. I thought the story was compelling and enlightening. However it was very wordy and the author had a lot of extraneous literary discussions that I don’t think added to the story.

Reviewer: Morelli Bass Girl
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Riveting True Tale of Friendship and Psychosis
Review: One of the best books I’ve ever read, this true story of two friends and the psychosis of one is haunting in its detail, its examination of our higher education, legal, and mental health systems, and the role of friendship. Brilliant, inspiring, terrifying, a must read for all. Superb!

Reviewer: Todd
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: heartfelt
Review: Beautifully written, so sincere, eloquent, and yet so utterly heartbreaking. Jonathan this book is such a gift. To those who have the chance, read this book.

Reviewer: KM2015
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Started out well enough
Review: Too long. Needed more editing. Also, another reviewer deemed it self serving, a sentiment which I understand here. I find the author’s style alienating at times (we get it, you’re smart), and too reaching at others with tenuous attempts to tie obtuse bits together for no apparent reason.This bothered me: short shrift given to drug use as it may pertain to the issue, an important missed opportunity.I edited this review because I did in fact finish the book. It was good. I didn’t find it great. This illness runs in my extended family, I have seen some of it for myself. I believe there is something to that old saw that nature loads the gun, environment pulls the trigger and would have appreciated more of that kind of discussion in the text.

Reviewer: Jason Adams
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Poignant meditation on mental illness
Review: Jonathan Rosen has no cure for the paradox of mental illness, but he has a unique point of view. A childhood friend of Michael Laudor, who appeared to find a balance with his illness until he tragically murdered his pregnant girlfriend, Rosen has had decades to ruminate on the disaster. The result is a book that functions as both biography and treatise on the mentally ill in America. The case of Michael Laudor seems to hit every note in the debate: how to intervene with an undiagnosed/unmedicated person? How to treat those who are medicated and coming to grips with their illness? What role and accommodations are available for those in the grip of illness, where even the treatments can inhibit potential?The primary finding here, beyond the identification of these legal and social challenges, is that even when a mentally ill person is presented with every benefit, including the best minds in our country and resources unavailable to anyone else, they can still meet a tragic end. The message is that something needs to change.

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Intellectual and Emotional
Review: The author writes in a narrative voice that draws you into his life, the cultural significance of psychology, politics, religion, science and individual experiences that shapes and defines lives. Wonderful, sensitive writing. He reminds you that friendship, connections have impact despite of its costs or because of them

Reviewer: D. Adams
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Wow. Fascinating and powerful. Could not stop reading.
Review: So many interesting threads, all of which I found compelling. I see others have called it too academic, like a doctoral thesis. Of course it’s written in a much more accessible way, and covers a broader scope than any doctoral thesis would, but the quality referred to is one thing I really enjoyed in the book.Will be most interesting to those with an intellectual bend, interested in ideas and the way they are both shaped by, and themselves shape, the world we live in. Also those interested in mental illness and in the nature of friendship.The less you know about the story going in, the better imo.

Reviewer: brent belzberg
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This is one of the great treatises on mental illness. It is so well written and so well researched but told in a manner that a laymen fully understands the many conflicts

Reviewer: GadGiltHomy
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Eyes opening novel on things like: the society in the 60-80s as well as mental illness. Rhe novel was worth the time. Truly good

Reviewer: Diana
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: This compelling story of decline and fall is so well told I had to remind myself that I hadn’t lived it. The time, the place, the people seemed more like facets of my own memory than figures in someone else’s narrative. Rosen’s account of his personal connection to the tragedy is brutally honest. His explanation of the role played by America’s mental health crisis is devastating. I could not put this book down. Very highly recommended.

Reviewer: Mark Lipton
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Not only a tragic story but an honest and insightful look at the great percentage of society impacted by mental illness and society’s failure to deliver much needed care.

Reviewer: Evelyn
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I think the childhood years could have been somewhat shortened without cutting the importance of this formative time for Michael and the author.