Nancy Erdmann

Amazing…a beautifully written, pellucid and nuanced, memoir about powerful subjects. Jonathan Rosen describes his relationship, from childhood through their adult lives, with a brilliant best friend. Rosen deftly chronicles how their lives parallel each other in various ways but diverge dramatically as his still brilliant, charming and capable friend experiences schizophrenia. Rosen describes how the influences of his friend’s family, mainly of his intense, driven Jewish father, and of a a cadre of experts, psychotherapeutically trained friends of the family, combine with the strenuous efforts of institutions to which the family and its friends have privileged access, through an informal but major historical, Jewish connection—Yale Law School in particular—result in a concerted, years-long, plan for loving rescue~

Riveting. Detailed. Convincing.