The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions

 
　　當強納森．羅森在1973年搬到新羅謝爾後，便和邁可．勞多成為了形影不離的好友。兩人出生背景相似，都是大學教授的孩子，同時學業成績優良。在他們雙雙進入耶魯大學後，似乎就註定了往後踏入美國菁英階層的順遂路途。

　　邁可短短三年內就以優異成績完成大學學業，並成功進入頂尖顧問公司工作，然而看似一帆風順的人生，卻在某一天傳來了噩耗：羅森接到消息，邁可經歷了嚴重的精神崩潰，並被送進醫院休養。邁可被診斷出罹患妄想型精神分裂症，然而在他調養的同時，也收到了來自耶魯法學院的錄取資格。不願就此錯過機會，邁可一邊努力對抗不斷出現的幻覺幻聽，最終完成法學院學業。這段勵志的故事登上了紐約時報，邁可因此獲出版社青睞，簽訂了自傳合約，電影翻拍權更被知名導演朗．霍華買下。然而邁可反轉再反轉的人生，最終卻收在一起震驚美國社會的悲劇：他敵不過精神疾病帶來的幻覺，殺害了一路陪伴他度過重重難關的未婚妻。
 
　　這部令人心碎的作品，重新檢視關於精神疾病，我們所理解及未能理解之處，羅森一路回溯那些在幻覺被錯認成真實之前的時光、那些籠罩邁可人生的暗影，他寫下的不僅是邁可的故事，也是眾多與精神疾病對抗的人生，最真實與痛苦的掙扎。(文/博客來編譯)

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.

Jonathan Rosen is the author of two novels: Eve’s Apple and Joy Comes in the Morning, and two non-fiction books: The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey Between Worlds and The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature. His essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Audubon and numerous anthologies. He created the culture section of The Forward newspaper, which he oversaw for ten years, and created and edited the Nextbook/Schocken Jewish Encounters Book Series, published by Schocken. He lives with his family in New York City.