Eminent Jews - by David Denby

Book Synopsis

Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, and Norman Mailer. Brilliant, brash, yet soulful, they were 100 percent Jewish and 100 percent American. They upended the restrained culture of their forebears and changed American life.

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

As prosperity for 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 around the world listened to music, defined what was vulgar, comprehended the relations of men and women, and understood the American soul. They were not saints; they were turbulent and self-dissatisfied intellectuals who fearlessly wielded their own newly won freedom to charge 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, yet vulnerable, even heartbreaking, in their ambition, ferocity, and pride.

Review Quotes

"David Denby succeeds marvelously in Eminent Jews, his portrait of four icons who defined American culture in the second half of the 20th century. . . . Throughout, he makes a convincing case that his subjects exercised a 'moral strenuousness' that accounts for the longevity of their works and ideas. . . . A longtime writer for The New Yorker, Denby, an obviously talented raconteur, perfects the ironic erudition that has long characterized that magazine's style."
--Alexander Nazaryan, The New York Times Book Review

"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

"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

"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."
--Franklin Foer, author of The Last Politician

"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

"The four subjects profiled by David Denby--all of them brilliant, daring, energetic, and headstrong--blew right past traditional boundaries and expanded the cultural landscape in literature, music, sexual parity, and even good taste. Eminent Jews is a joy to read."
--John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

"The depth and delight with which David Denby reveals these four extraordinary lives would have been enough to make for four rich and satisfying biographies. But the decision to combine these four lives into one book was inspired, turning Eminent Jews into a profound examination of what the freedom of America meant for Jewish creativity and what Jewish creativity meant for America."
--Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex

"With his entertaining and captivating storytelling, David Denby lays bare how Brooks, Friedan, Mailer, and Bernstein transformed America. This is a joyful book to read--Denby's writing makes everyone sparkle, warts and all, and captures better than any other recent author how particular 'eminent' Jews shaped mid-twentieth century American culture. With great panache and raw honesty, Denby reminds us of the promise of America for Jews, and how Jews, like all immigrant groups, reshaped this country as they engaged it."
--Rebecca Kobrin, Knapp Professor of American Jewish History, Columbia University

"What a wonderful book, at once deeply serious and wildly entertaining. Denby's Jews are brilliant, obnoxious, hilarious, heroic, wrestling with life like Jacob with the angel. And, above all, they are proud; no more of that historic cowering. As the author writes, 'If their activities marked the end of tribal shame, it did not mark the end of conscience.' We need this book very badly right now."
--Joe Klein, author of Primary Colors

"Like Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians, which is still popular more than a century after its publication, Eminent Jews is destined to be a classic. Denby's discerning wit, critic's eye and nuanced grasp of the cultural history of the second half of the 20th century is unparalleled. So is his sense of what it means to be an accomplished Jew in America."
--Jonathan Alter, author of American Reckoning: Inside Trump's Trial--and My Own

About the Author