A vivid portrait of four bold Jewish American icons whose creativity and ambition reshaped culture, blending brilliance and flaws in a transformative era of newfound freedom and identity.

SYNOPSIS

Eminent Jews explores the lives and cultural impact of four towering American figures—Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, and Norman Mailer—whose work reshaped the landscape of the twentieth century. Though they moved in different circles, they were united by a shared moment in history and a distinctly bold sensibility, fueled by the expanding freedoms available to Jews in postwar America. Each, in their own way, challenged conventions: redefining music, comedy, gender roles, and literary expression. As barriers of antisemitism began to ease, they embraced their dual identities as fully Jewish and fully American, producing work that was daring, provocative, and deeply influential.

David Denby presents them with both admiration and honesty, capturing their brilliance alongside their flaws—their ambition, ego, vulnerability, and restlessness. The result is a vivid, nuanced portrait of creativity unleashed at a transformative moment in American cultural history.

<< See more book resources

 

WHY WE LOVE THIS BOOK

"The book leads to a thoughtful discussion about the profound difference between Jewish life and influence in 1950 compared to today. It is valuable not just as a thoughtful reexamination of the lives of Brooks, Friedan, Mailer, and Bernstein, but as a way to see how their ability to speak up and take outrageous chances might be a model for our individual and group response to the present reality of Jewish life."

Rita Frank
Great Jewish Bookshelf committee member

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Denby was born in New York City in 1943, and was educated at Columbia and Stanford.  He is the author of Great Books (1996), an acclaimed account of returning to college and reading the Western classics during the curriculum wars; American Sucker (2004), his wrenching memoir of getting caught up in the stock market at the time of the tech bubble and the breakup of his marriage; Snark (2009), a polemic against the spread of nasty low sarcasm as a journalistic style in the Internet age; Do the Movies Have a Future? (2012), a collection of his best movie criticism from The New Yorker; Lit Up (2016), a prequel to Great Books, in which he embeds in tenth-grade English classes at three public schools to see if—and how—teenagers can be turned on to serious reading; and Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer (2025), a biography of four American Jews who emerged after the Second World War and triumphed by means of their own gifts and the new media of television, the long-playing record, mass-market paperbacks, and the like. Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, and Norman Mailer were free in a way that Jews had never been free before. They led creative and tumultuous lives, made trouble for themselves and others, and changed American culture.

Denby is a staff writer and former film critic for The New Yorker, and his reviews and essays have appeared in The New Republic, The Atlantic, and New York magazine (where he was film critic from 1978 to 1998), among other places. He lives in New York City with his wife, novelist Susan Rieger. He has two sons and two grandsons.

DavidDenby.com