Nothing Random

At midcentury, everyone knew Bennett, the witty, beloved, middle-aged panelist on What’s My Line?, whom TV brought into America’s homes each week. They didn't know the handsome, driven young man of the 1920s who'd vowed to become a great publisher — and a decade later he was. By then, he had signed Eugene O'Neill, Gertrude Stein, William Faulkner, and had fought the landmark censorship case that gave Americans the freedom to read James Joyce's Ulysses.

With his best friend and lifelong business partner Donald Klopfer and other young Jewish entrepreneurs like the Knopfs and Simon & Schuster, Cerf remade what books were published and how. In 1925 he and Klopfer bought the Modern Library and turned it into an institution, then founded Random House, which eventually became a home to Truman Capote, Ralph Ellison, Ayn Rand, Dr. Seuss, Toni Morrison, and many more.

Even before TV, Cerf was a bestselling author and columnist as well as a publisher; the show supercharged his celebrity. A brilliant social networker and major influencer before such terms existed, he connected books, Broadway, TV, Hollywood, and politics. A fervent democratizer, he published "high," "low," and a wide range of work, and from the roaring twenties to the swinging sixties collected an incredible array of friends, having a fabulous time along the way.

For four decades, Gayle Feldman has reported on publishing for Publishers Weekly, The New York Times, The Bookseller, and others.

Using new and deeply researched material from 200 interviews and many archives, she recalls Bennett Cerf to vibrant life, bringing booklovers into his world and time, and finally giving a true American original his due.

The story of the legendary Random House founder, whose seemingly charmed life at the apogee of the American Century featured an epic cast and left an enduring cultural legacy.