"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 "This cinematic biography . teems with a star-studded cast . Drawing on Cerf's personal archive, as well those of writers he worked with, and more than 200 interviews, Feldman paints a candid portrait of one of the giants of modern publishing, who emerges as a charming, humorous man who was open to 'many worlds, high and low, mass and class' and committed to his authors. This is monumental." -- Publishers Weekly , starred review "[An] engaging biography of the man who was at the center of the American publishing scene--and ubiquitous in many other venues--for half a century . A well-crafted life of a publisher whose world spanned culture high and low, and whose influence endures." --Kirkus Reviews.