Gayle Feldman

Praise for Nothing Random

“Cinematic…teems with a star-studded cast….This is monumental.” Publishers Weekly

“A well-crafted life of a publisher whose world spanned culture high and low, and whose influence endures.” Kirkus Reviews

“[V]ividly detailed, compelling, and complexly revelatory…encompassing a dynamic history of twentieth-century American publishing, Feldman’s foundational biography of this unique and consequential publisher is magnificent, engrossing, and invaluable.” Booklist

“An engrossing and intimate story of Bennett Cerf’s incredible publishing journey through the American Century… Gayle Feldman has crafted a sweeping intellectual history with a stunning cast of characters. A scintillating biography that reveals the inner struggles of a great publishing house. Feldman’s is a stunning achievement.” Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

“Bennett Cerf didn’t just publish books — he shaped American culture. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews and unpublished letters, Gayle Feldman’s vibrant, intimate, and monumental biography brilliantly captures the ambition, charisma, and daring of a man whose passion for storytelling changed the literary landscape and the way we read. Nothing Random is more than a portrait of a publisher, TV star, and tastemaker — it’s an absorbing cultural history filled with a bright array of American legends. Come for the Ulysses free speech case, stay for the boozy late nights with Frank Sinatra.” Heather Clark, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

“In his person no less than in his profession, Bennett Cerf defined the broadband culture of the mid-twentieth century, where popular and high art intermingled. A bestselling author, columnist, and celebrity whose style and swagger were on view in magazines and on television, he created a publishing empire, Random House, that put James Joyce’s Ulysses and Dr. Seuss (among countless others) on American bookshelves, and became the template for the modern media conglomerate. Few people know more about the publishing business than Gayle Feldman, and in Nothing Random her grasp of its history and mechanics is on full view; but she’s also a writer whose analytic eye is tempered with a warm heart. This incisive but sympathetic portrait explains why Gertrude Stein (of all people) said that Cerf was ‘the only publisher I will ever love.’” Amanda Vaill, bestselling author of Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution

“Bennett Cerf lived a larger-than-life life, and Gayle Feldman has given us the biography the great publisher deserves — a Lucullan feast of a book, filled with boldfaced names, meticulously researched and elegantly written, and for all its appropriate heft, something Cerf himself would have appreciated: a page-turner.” James Kaplan, bestselling author of Frank: The Voice and Sinatra: The Chairman

“Gayle Feldman knows publishing, so Nothing Random is a seriously knowing look at the business from the scrappy Roaring Twenties to the corporate 70s (and after), but told with the same high spirits as the irrepressible Bennett Cerf who was at the heart of most of it, mixing business with fun. Everybody’s here, from Gertrude Stein to Frank Sinatra. Authoritative, affectionate, and always entertaining, Nothing Random is like being a guest at one of Cerf’s legendary dinner parties, where authors met Broadway composers, TV celebrities and maybe a starlet or two who’d just breezed in from the Coast and no one went home early.” Joseph Kanon, former publisher and bestselling author of Istanbul Passage and Shanghai

“In this magisterial biography, Gayle Feldman has accomplished the impossible, done justice to the outsize man who in the mid-20th century knew everyone of literary or showbiz importance, made deals with most of them, became a TV star who (to his sometime embarrassment) outshone his authors in the public imagination. As founding father of Random House, visionary publisher of the Modern Library, innovator in publishing plays, the man’s wingspan incredible in its own time, is impossible to imagine today.

“We must be grateful for what Feldman calls his ‘almost shameless need for attention, approval, and affection,’ for it drew celebrities to him like a magnet. From Eugene O’Neill and Faulkner to Sinatra and Moss Hart, from actress Sylvia Sidney his first wife, to Phyllis Fraser (of the famous Ginger Rogers extended family) as his almost-as-famous second, Cerf’s ever-widening guest list features luminaries of an order rarely seen today and certainly not in one place. The huckster in him with the giant-size desire for visibility also led him into less scrupulous enterprises.

“Both serious and scintillating, Nothing Random is a work of scrupulous scholarship that has the reader racing through the pages in openmouthed delight. The man was a whirlwind, and hats off to a biographer who keeps pace with him. I love the scene when, in the early hours of a new year, Cerf flies from Frank Sinatra’s Palm Springs compound to New York City, serves as emcee at John Lindsay’s swearing in as mayor, attends a VIP party, then right back to Sinatra’s digs, all within 21 hours!” Molly Haskell, author of From Reverence to Rape, Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films, and Frankly, My Dear