The Best Minds

TL, DR: Rightfully chosen as a 2023 Top 10 book by the New York Times, may not be for everyone.

Jonathan Rosen and Michael Laudor became instant best friends when they met at age 10 in 1973 suburban New York. Michael was the brilliant, quirky one, while Jonathan vomited from anxiety during his Bar Mitzvah. Both boys went to Yale, but by then they had grown apart, partially because of unspoken rivalry. After college graduation, their life paths diverged dramatically. Jonathan moved to California to pursue a doctorate degree. Michael had a psychotic break and spent eight months on a locked psychiatric ward, convinced that his real parents had been murdered and replaced by Nazi replicants.

When Michael was finally deemed stable enough for release, he grabbed onto the lifeline of a deferred acceptance to Yale law school. The dean, his professors, and fellow students all pitched in to ensure that he wasn't stressed, hoping to forestall another psychotic episode. In 1995, Michael was profiled in a New York Times article that celebrated his heroic journey from mental institution to Yale Law graduate. Then Hollywood called, eager to make a movie based on the memoir Michael hadn't yet written. The pressure to produce and isolation of writing led to a sharp mental deterioration. In June 1998, Michael Laudor made the headlines again, this time for a horrific reason: he fatally stabbed his longtime girlfriend, believing that she was a robot. He was found unfit to stand trial, and currently lives at a secure psychiatric facility with no plans for release.

This book emotionally and mentally challenged me in ways that other similar accounts of mental illness have not. You might have to be a New York, late-Baby-Boomer Jew to fully relate, but Rosen and Laudor's childhood easily could have been my own. With the Holocaust still fresh in their memories, Jewish parents of that era considered it their children's sacred responsibility to work hard and be extraordinary, as if doing so would somehow stick it to the Nazis. Perhaps that is why nobody saw any red flags in Michael's early behavior - he was slightly odd, but he was brilliant, and that was more important.

Most books of this type accuse the mental health system of failing t0 adequately care for individuals with Serious Mental Illness, and Rosen doesn't hesitate to cast aspersions there. But he goes much farther than that, citing Alan Ginsberg, Michel Foucault, and other mid-century “thought leaders” who claimed that mental “illness” was a rational response to the evils of capitalism and governmental power. This lofty post-modernist view informed Michael's Yale law professors, who were naively confident he would thrive in their protective bubble, shielded from the cruelty of the real world. Rosen also examines the legal definition of “insanity,” and the well-intentioned lawyers who liberalized the insanity defense so that instead of ruling on the defendants' ability to tell right from wrong, the standard was broadened to whether the defendant had a “mental disease or mental defect.” The unintended result of this change was that defendants wound up spending years in state hospitals rather than serving comparatively shorter and finite prison terms.

Rosen also points the finger back at himself, wondering if he missed the signs of Michael's deterioration. Could the tragedy have been avoided if he had just called or visited one more time? Did he ignore the red flags because he was happy to finally be winning their unspoken competition? Many people who were part of Michael's protective community experienced the same guilt. Had their coddling contributed to the deaths of a young, caring, successful woman and her unborn baby? In the efforts to destigmatize schizophrenia, had everyone failed to admit that the paranoid nature of Michael's delusions might give rise to violence?

The Best Minds is exhaustive and exhausting. It felt personal largely because Jonathan and Michael could have been my own neighbors and fellow temple members. But even if your background and age are wildly dissimilar, I believe you will still find the book compelling as an intimate, multidisciplinary account of an American tragedy.