THE BEST MINDS: A Story of Friendship, Madness and the Tragedy of Good Intentions, by Jonathan Rosen (Allen Lane, $75 hb)
Allen Ginsberg’s poem , published in 1956 with its iconic opening verse, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”, became one of the defining literary works of the 1960s. It was dedicated to Carl Solomon, a poet Ginsberg met in a psychiatric hospital after Solomon suffered a nervous breakdown, and was diagnosed with depression and schizophrenia. Ginsberg’s mother suffered from the same
