Eminent Jews

Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, and Norman Mailer. Brilliant, brash, they were 100% Jewish and 100% American, and 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 20th century, altering the way people listened to music, defined what was vulgar or not, comprehended the relations of men and women, and understood the nation’s soul. 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, Denby presents these four figures as egotistical and generous—larger than life, all of them, both daringly individual and emblematic of their Jewish generation.