Nothing Random

Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built

Gayle Feldman

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Paperback

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English

Random House USA Inc
13 January 2026

Biography; Biography: general; History of the Americas; Media, information & communication industries; Press & journalism; Publishing industry

The story of the legendary Random House founder, whose seemingly charmed life at the apogee of the American Century afforded him a front-row seat to literary and cultural history in the making

“A stunning achievement . . . a sweeping intellectual history with a stunning cast of characters that reveals the inner struggles of a great publishing house.”—Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer

At midcentury, everyone knew Bennett Cerf: witty, beloved, middle-aged panelist on What’s My Line? whom TV brought into America’s homes each week. But they didn’t know that the handsome, driven, paradoxical young man of the 1920s had vowed to become a great publisher and, a decade later, was. By then, he’d signed Eugene O’Neill, Gertrude Stein, and 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 the book business: what was 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, James Michener, and many more.

Even before TV, Cerf was a bestselling author and columnist as well as publisher; the show super-charged his celebrity, bringing fame—but also criticism. A brilliant social networker and major influencer before such terms existed, he connected books to Broadway, TV, Hollywood, and politics. A fervent democratizer, he published “high,” “low,” and wide, and from the Roaring Twenties to the Swinging Sixties collected an incredible array of friends, from George Gershwin to Frank Sinatra, having a fabulous time along the way.

Using interviews with more than two hundred individuals, deeply researched archival material, and letters from private collections not previously available, this book brings Bennett Cerf to vibrant life, drawing book lovers into

By: Gayle Feldman
Imprint: Random House USA Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 47mm
Weight: 1.482kg
ISBN: 9781400060276
ISBN 10: 1400060273
Pages: 1072
Publication Date: 13 January 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Gayle Feldman has written for Publishers Weekly for forty years, including as a senior staff editor; since 1999, as U.S. correspondent for The Bookseller, she has analyzed the American book business for U.K. readers; and she has contributed features and reviews on books and culture to The New York Times, The Nation, The Daily Beast, and other publications. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Times of London. She is the author of the cancer memoir You Don’t Have to Be Your Mother, published by W. W. Norton, and was awarded a National Arts Journalism Program fellowship at Columbia University, through which she published Best and Worst of Times: The Changing Business of Trade Books. The National Endowment for the Humanities has supported her work on Nothing Random with a Public Scholars award. She lives in New York City and Sag Harbor.

Reviews for Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built

“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 co-author of American Prometheus “Few people know more about the publishing business than Gayle Feldman, 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 “A monumental biography . . . Bennett Cerf didn’t just publish books—he shaped American culture. 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 “Cerf lived a larger-than-life life. This is the biography the great publisher deserves—a Lucullan feast of a book, meticulously researched, elegantly written, and filled with boldfaced names. For all its appropriate heft, it's a page-turner.”—James Kaplan, bestselling author of Frank: The Voice and Sinatra: The Chairman “Authoritative and always entertaining, Nothing Random is like being a guest at one of Cerf’s legendary dinners, where authors met Broadway composers and TV celebrities and no one went home early.”—Joseph Kanon, former book editor and bestselling author of Istanbul Passage and Shanghai “The visionary publisher who became a TV star everyone knew . . . Nothing Random has the reader racing through the pages. Cerf was a whirlwind, and hats off to a biographer who keeps pace with him.”—Molly Haskell, critic and author of Frankly, My Dear: Gone with the Wind Revisited