Jonathan Rosen

A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions

Best Minds

A novelist's gripping investigation of the forces that led his childhood best friend from academic stardom to the psychiatric hospital where he has lived since killing the woman he loved When the Rosens moved to New Rochelle, New York in 1973, Jonathan Rosen and Michael Laudor became inseparable. Both children of professors, the boys were best friends and fierce rivals who soon followed each other to Yale University. Michael blazed through Yale in three years, graduating summa cum laude and landing a top-flight consulting job. Then one day, Jonathan received a devastating call: Michael had suffered a psychotic break and was in the locked ward of a psychiatric hospital. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Michael was still in hospital when he learned he'd been accepted to Yale Law School, and living in a halfway house when he decided, against all odds, to enroll. Still battling delusions, he managed to graduate, and after his triumphant story was featured in The New York Times, sold a memoir for a vast sum. Ron Howard bought film rights, completing the dream for Michael and his tirelessly supportive girlfriend Carrie, and Brad Pitt was set to star. But then Michael, in the grip of psychosis, committed a horrific act that made him a front-page story of an entirely different sort. The Best Minds is Jonathan Rosen's powerful account of an American tragedy, set in the final decades of the American century, an era that coincided with the emptying out of state mental hospitals. It is a story about the bonds of friendship, the price of delusion and the mystery of identity. Tender, funny, and harrowing by turns, The Best Minds is both a beautifully rendered coming of age story and an indictment of the profound neglect of mental illness in our society.

The Best Minds

Ruth Simon is beautiful, smart, talented, and always hungry. As a teenager, she starved herself almost to death, and though outwardly healed, inwardly she remains dangerously obsessed with food. For Joseph Zimmerman, Ruth's tormented relationship with eating is a source of deep distress and erotic fascination. Driven by his love for Ruth, and haunted by his own secrets, Joseph sets out to unravel the mystery of hunger and denial. This gripping debut novel is a powerful exploration of appetite, love, and desire.

A Novel

Eve's Apple

Devin Dexter and his cousin Tommy just saved the city of Gravesend from the menace of magical, malicious Cuddle Bunnies brought to life by the warlock, Herb. But there’s no rest for the wicked, as a new mysterious neighbor moves in across the street. At night. With a coffin. Tommy immediately jumps to conclusions as he thinks this can only mean one thing: Vampires. Devin isn’t so quick to believe, as he is struck by the neighbor’s daughter, a girl his age. Even though Tommy points out that they have never seen her during the day. Yet when she invites him to a dance at her school—the Nosfer Academy of Talented Understudies—how can Devin say no? Tommy, though, realizes that this is an opportunity. After tackling a wizard last winter, surely they can protect Gravesend from some measly vampires, right?

Devin Dexter #2

From Sunset Till Sunrise

A Journey between Worlds

The Talmud and the Internet

The author explores the relationship between ancient religious tradition and modern technology as he reflects on the very different lives of his two grandmothers--one American, and one murdered by the Nazis.

A Journey Between Worlds

Aerial delights: A history of America as seen through the eyes of a bird-watcher John James Audubon arrived in America in 1803, when Thomas Jefferson was president, and lived long enough to see his friend Samuel Morse send a telegraphic message from his house in New York City in the 1840s. As a boy, Teddy Roosevelt learned taxidermy from a man who had sailed up the Missouri River with Audubon, and yet as president presided over America's entry into the twentieth century, in which our ability to destroy ourselves and the natural world was no longer metaphorical. Roosevelt, an avid birder, was born a hunter and died a conservationist. Today, forty-six million Americans are bird-watchers. The Life of the Skies is a genre-bending journey into the meaning of a pursuit born out of the tangled history of industrialization and nature longing. Jonathan Rosen set out on a quest not merely to see birds but to fathom their centrality—historical and literary, spiritual and scientific—to a culture torn between the desire both to conquer and to conserve. Rosen argues that bird-watching is nothing less than the real national pastime—indeed it is more than that, because the field of play is the earth itself. We are the players and the spectators, and the outcome—since bird and watcher are intimately connected—is literally a matter of life and death.

Birding at the End of Nature

The Life of the Skies

Wrestling with the contradictions in her life, rabbi Deborah Green discovers a world of tragedy, madness, love, and redemption when she encounters Henry Friedman, an older patient and Holocaust survivor who had attempted suicide.

Joy Comes in the Morning

"We invited writer Jonathan Rosen into the expanding archive of the Jewish European ephemera collection, launched as part of the National Library of Israel's programme of renewal. We asked him to reflect upon the evolving role that disposable artefacts play in our understanding of Jewish culture, past and Present"--

Telling Our Story Piece by Piece

The Jewish European Ephemera Collection

Talmud and the Internet

Deborah Green is a woman of passionate contradictions--a rabbi who craves goodness and surety while wrestling with her own desires and with the sorrow and pain she sees around her. Her life changes when she visits the hospital room of Henry Friedman, an older man who has attempted suicide. His parents were murdered in the Holocaust when he was a child, and all his life he's struggled with difficult questions. Deborah's encounter with Henry and his family draws her into a world of tragedy, frailty, love, and, finally, hope.

Anne Rosen

Norma Rosen

A 10-year-old girl describes how her family celebrates Passover.

A Family Passover

An Exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum from the Collection of Jonathan Rosen

Archaic Coins

Ruth is beautiful, smart - and always hungry. Once an anorexic, the simple act of eating remains a torment. Her lover, Joseph, is determined to save her, and tries to unravel the mystery of hunger and denial. But as his desperation mounts, he is drawn deeper and deeper into Ruth's obsession.

Aerial delights: A history of America as seen through the eyes of a bird-watcher John James Audubon arrived in America in 1803, when Thomas Jefferson was president, and lived long enough to see his friend Samuel Morse send a telegraphic message from his house in New York City in the 1840s. As a boy, Teddy Roosevelt learned taxidermy from a man who had sailed up the Missouri River with Audubon, and yet as president presided over America’s entry into the twentieth century, in which our ability to destroy ourselves and the natural world was no longer metaphorical. Roosevelt, an avid birder, was born a hunter and died a conservationist. Today, forty-six million Americans are bird-watchers. The Life of the Skies is a genre-bending journey into the meaning of a pursuit born out of the tangled history of industrialization and nature longing. Jonathan Rosen set out on a quest not merely to see birds but to fathom their centrality—historical and literary, spiritual and scientific—to a culture torn between the desire both to conquer and to conserve. Rosen argues that bird-watching is nothing less than the real national pastime—indeed it is more than that, because the field of play is the earth itself. We are the players and the spectators, and the outcome—since bird and watcher are intimately connected—is literally a matter of life and death.

A snapshot of the contemporary American family and a romance in the tradition of Philip Roth's "Goodbye, Columbus, Eve's Apple" offers "a quietly powerful exploration of a theme as old as the story of Adam and Eve" ("The New York Times").

Streets

It's the 1920s and James Abraham is an average fourteen-year-old Brooklyn newsie. But when his girlfriend's sister is kidnapped, James finds himself tangled in a dangerous web of crime and corruption. Includes historical background information. Paired to the nonfiction title Dropping in on New York.

Rockefeller Caper

Nancy Waggoner

Early Greek Coins from the Collection of Jonathan P. Rosen

Vibrant photos, exciting details, and historical context bring one of the hottest sports cars, the Jaguar F-TYPE, to life for readers of all ages.

Jonathan Rosen

About

Books

Join the club