Not particularly well-written, but interesting and thought provoking.

What I found interesting and thought provoking
This story is a travesty- due to mental illness, a gifted man's dreams were endangered. Because he was considered "brilliant " he became a "cause celebre " This reminds me of another book I read recently, "All That is Wicked", in which the killer, "Edward Ruloff, was considered too "brilliant " to execute. I kept thinking about the mentally ill who are only of average or below average intelligence. Shouldn't our society try to give them more support?
Was Michael Laudor given false hope, and then left to founder? So many warning signs were ignored because this didn't fit the narrative of the hero overcoming adversity.

What I didn't like:
I usually avoid memoirs, and this is a good example of what I dislike about them. Rosen glorifies the minutiae of his childhood ad nausem. He revels in his and Michael's extraordinary potential. Unfortunately, the victim. Caroline Costello is a mere side note. As an investigator reflected,
"You say 'Michael Laudor, and I think, 'Caroline Costello ', and Caroline isn't here to speak for herself. " (p. 512) ( )

Very long memoir but well worth the read. In addition to the tragic story of Michael Laudor, the author puts schizophrenia into the historical backdrop of culture, law and psychiatry. ( )

The Best Minds combines a memoir-esque narrative of the author, Jonathan Rosen, with the tragic story of his childhood best friend, Michael Laudor. Laudor, who infamously rose above his illness to graduate from Yale and Yale Law School only to kill his pregnant fiance in a bout of delusional frenzy, serves as the centerpiece of examining mental health history, legislation, and writings. The author uses their relationship to highlight moments and make the book feel more personal than just research and for me, these were the most successful parts. I found The Best Minds to be too long, but still a very thorough and interesting examination of deinstitutionalization and the ramifications those actions have caused in our country. ( )

Rosen tells the story of his childhood friend, Michael Laudor. There are two distinct narratives here. One is the tragic story of a promising genius who becomes schizophrenic, while the other explores the various ways this disease has been misunderstood by society and mismanaged by the medical, legal and academic professions. Iniitially, Michael's case showed promise but ended in tragedy. Rosen emphasizes the pain experienced by the victim, but also by his family and those he touched. Clearly, there is plenty of blame to go around, but Rosen sidesteps that by expertly sticking to events and a judicious reading of the literature. Could this tragic outcome have been avoided? Maybe, if Michael had been a little less of a rebel and a bit more compliant. Elyn Saks also was a brilliant Yale law student who struggled with schizophrenia. After multiple relapses with compliance, she eventually came to the conclusion that her medications were making an almost normal life possible. Unfortunately in Michael's case, Rosen concludes in his sad epilogue, there was "no going back." ( )

Minds in Madness
In Rosen’s own words:
“This is a personal story routed in childhood, tangled in the history of the twentieth century and told in the third decade of the twenty first century by a writer past the midpoint of his life looking back at a friendship that began when he was ten years old. In some sense it is easier to remember 1973 the year I moved to New Rochelle than 1998 the year Michael killed Carrie.”

What can I add. He’s said it all in this synopsis written at the end of his book. I can only give a few impressions.

The title of the book comes from the counter-culture poet Allen Ginsberg, “Howl”, which opens with “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.”

Michael Lauder and Jonathan Rosen grew in the Jewish suburb of New Rochelle. I used to pass the New Rochelle rail station on my way to Grand Central from Greenwich Connecticut every day for two years in the late nineties. It a pleasant little suburb, an easy commute to The City. I had no idea that Norman Rockwell lived there - his photos depict an entirely different place in their idealized portrait of America, though many of his models were local kids. I had no idea that the northern part of New Rochelle was an area of academic Jews, many of whom in the 1950s had living memories of the Holocaust. According to Rosen, his family chose New Rochelle so that their children would have “the right sort of children” for their friends. The adults were professors, lawyers and scientists. And it was here in New Rochelle where Jonathan Rosen met Michael Lauder, who forty years later on June 17, 1998 was to murder his wife Caroline Costello.

The Best Minds tells the story from the childhood friendship till the early 21st century when Rosen last visited Lauder in the Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychotherapy Center in New Hampton.

The two friends Jonathan and Michael gre up when the counter-culture had ceased being Counter. Rosen remembers Ginsberg and his cohorts as being old men. Similar to how millennials see today’s Boomers.

Both went on to Yale but the friends’ paths diverged. Michael had developed schizophrenia. He believed that his parents were Nazis who had killledhis parents, storing their bodies in the attic. At one stage his mother was so scared of him that she called the police and he was institutionalized on his own cognizance.

From then on after periods of taking and stopping his medication Michael wrote a book about his schizophrenia. It looked like it was going to be a highly publicized hit, possibly to be made into a movie. All deals were obviously stopped when Michael Lauder killed his wife. He thought she was a clockwork doll.

There was no trial, prosecutors accepted Laudor's plea of not guilty by reason of mental defect.

Much of the book discusses the diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia, from Freud through R.D. Laing to now. Rosen questions the complicated policies of deinstitutionalization. He’s obviously not happy with Lang’s blaming the nuclear family for mental illness, and a firm believer in medication and institutionalization when there is a possibility of danger to others. With all the emphasis being put on the tragedy of Michael Lauder, the promising and highly intelligent Yale graduate, Rosen asks, “What about Caroline Costello?”

He quotes the ending of King Lear
“The weight of these sad times we must obey
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say..”

A fitting thought to end my review. ( )