Eminent Jews
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.
Reviews
“David Denby manages to capture his subjects in a remarkable way, all the while grounding them in their personal and public circumstance. By this feat he has enabled us, perhaps, to enjoy and understand them as they actually were.”
―Bradley Cooper
“With Eminent Jews, David Denby has written a fantastic book about four remarkably talented and consequential figures of American arts and letters. The book is as brilliant and witty as its subjects.”
―Aaron Sorkin
“A marvel. I cannot recall the last time I devoured a book as I did this one. . . . The writing is sensational: witty, persuasive, lyrical, passionate. The reader laughs, grimaces, tears up, is alternately delighted and disgusted, by the antics and sometimes unmet ambitions of these four oversized, manic Jews. . . . As a cultural history of postwar America, Eminent Jews stands alone.”
―David Nasaw, author of Andrew Carnegie
“An exuberant, beautiful, wise celebration of American Jewish life in the twentieth century, and, let's use the word, eminent cultural history. His deeply psychological portraits of his four subjects will be regarded as the definitive ones.”