The Finest Minds: A Story of Friendship, Insanity, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions

One in every of Barack Obama’s Favourite Books of 2023

“Courageous and nuanced . . . an act of great compassion and a literary triumph.” —The New York Instances

“Immensely emotional and unforgettably haunting.” —The Wall Avenue Journal

Acclaimed writer Jonathan Rosen’s haunting investigation of the forces that led his closest childhood buddy, Michael Laudor, from the heights of sensible promise to the forensic psychiatric hospital the place he has lived since killing the girl he liked. A narrative about friendship, love, and the value of self-delusion, The Finest Minds explores the methods during which we perceive—and fail to grasp—psychological sickness.

When the Rosens moved to New Rochelle in 1973, Jonathan Rosen and Michael Laudor turned inseparable. Each kids of school professors, the boys have been finest mates and eager opponents, and, after they each bought into Yale College, appeared set to affix the American meritocratic elite.
 
Michael blazed by school in three years, graduating summa cum laude and touchdown a top-flight consulting job. However all wasn’t because it appeared. Sooner or later, Jonathan acquired the decision: Michael had suffered a severe psychotic break and was within the locked ward of a psychiatric hospital.
 
Identified with paranoid schizophrenia, Michael was nonetheless battling delu­sions when he traded his midway home for Yale Regulation College. Featured in The New York Instances as a job mannequin genius, he bought a memoir, with movie rights to Ron Howard. However then Michael, within the grip of an unshakeable paranoid fantasy, stabbed his girlfriend Carrie to loss of life and have become a front-page story of a completely completely different kind.
 
Tender, humorous, and harrowing by turns, The Finest Minds is Jonathan Rosen’s magnificent and heartbreaking account of excellent intentions and tragic outcomes whose significance will echo broadly.