Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, and Norman Mailer.

Brilliant, brash, 100 percent Jewish and 100 percent American, they were hell-bent on shaking up the world of their fathers.

They worked in different fields, and, apart from clinking glasses at parties now and then, they hardly knew one another. But they shared a common historical moment and a common temperament. For all four, their Jewish heritage was electrified by American liberty.

As prosperity for American Jews increased and anti-Semitism began to fade after World War II, these four creative giants stormed through the latter half of the twentieth century, altering the way people listened to music (Bernstein), defined what was vulgar or not (Mel Brooks), comprehended the relations of men and women (Betty Friedan), and understood the nation’s soul (Norman Mailer). They were not saints; they were Jews, children of immigrants, turbulent and self-dissatisfied intellectuals who fearlessly wielded their own newly won freedom to free up American culture.

Celebratory yet candid, at times fiercely critical, David Denby presents these four figures as egotistical and generous—larger-than-life, all of them, both daringly individual and emblematic of their Jewish generation.