Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built

by Gayle Feldman

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

At midcentury, everyone knew Bennett 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, was. By then, he’d 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 the book what was published, and how. In 1925, he and Klopfer had 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 publisher; the show super-charged his celebrity. A brilliant social networker and major influencer before such terms existed, he connected books-Broadway-TV-Hollywood-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, 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.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Biography Memoir, Writing, Books About Books, Memoir

1072 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2026

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why write a book about a man few people know today, by digging through his voluminous archive? Because it was there.

Before reading this book, I read some interviews with author Gayle Feldman, in which she described discovering that Random House and Bennett Cerf each had a vast, untapped cache of papers. Even though she herself knew little about Cerf, she figured someone ought to do something with all of that source material. So she spent the last quarter century turning it - and her own extensive research - into what became this book.

The very audacity of putting out a 1,072-page, encyclopedic doorstop of a biography about someone whose ephemeral fame faded more than half a century ago was actually what piqued my curiosity about this book. A 300-pager, I might not have bothered with. But the heft of this book suggested this must be a life story worth telling.

In truth, Cerf seemed not quite complex and fascinating enough to merit all 1,000+ pages on his own. But his biography here is intertwined with a biography of Random House itself, with multiple mini-biographies along the way of the many authors he worked with and came to befriend - everyone from William Faulkner, to Gertrude Stein, to Truman Capote, to James Michener, to Ayn Rand, to Dr. Seuss - all of whom had their own compelling, complicated and sometimes tragic stories.

The story of Bennett Cerf, then, is really a larger story about the business he founded and the American book publishing business as a whole. He was good friends with Alfred Knopf, and college friends with Dick Simon and Max Schuster, all of whose names readers will recognize as having started their own publishing firms. Cerf got his start in the industry by republishing classics and works by foreign authors at a time when such books were harder to find. That led to his acquisition of the Modern Library, which led to the founding of Random House, which led Cerf to become as big in the publishing business as his contemporaries.

Much of the book delves into what made Cerf and Random House stand out. He was always searching for up-and-comers to sign, he was heavily invested in the care and feeding of his authors, he famously championed a controversial battle to publish Ulysses and overturn its ban on obscenity grounds, and he tapped into emerging publishing trends including the booming popularity of paperbacks, the sale of books in nontraditional public places beyond the bookstore, and the use of popular fiction as source material for Hollywood, as Cerf often negotiated film rights for books he published.

Not content to be a behind-the-scenes player, though, Cerf sought to be recognized in his own right. He began writing columns for the Saturday Review of Literature, which led to emceeing a book-related radio show, which led to writing humor columns, which led to writing books of his own compiling jokes and puns, which led to his invitation to become a panelist on TV's What’s My Line?, which turned into a 17-year gig and firmly established him as a “personality.”

Feldman traces these ambitions back to his time working at his college newspaper, which served him well on multiple fronts - it taught him “how to write amusingly and fast for publication," while "honing his innate ability to schmooze, charm, and make the right connections.”

This dichotomy between the serious and the silly, the highbrow and lowbrow, is an ongoing theme in the book. To those who knew him from TV, he came across as classy but accessible, witty without being a comedian, intelligent without being an intellectual. To many in the literary community, though, compiling joke books and appearing regularly on a TV game show made him seem like an unserious lightweight. Cerf shrugged off any criticisms, his usual retort being, “what can I say, I’m a ham,” and defending What’s My Line? as a simple pastime that did no harm. Besides, compared to the game shows of today, What’s My Line? was relatively dignified and erudite, so he wasn’t exactly debasing himself just by being on TV.

Since anyone who remembers him at all today, knows him from reruns of What’s My Line?, it was somewhat disappointing that there’s not more about the show in the book, considering it accounted for a good 17 years of his life. One chapter is devoted to the show (with at least one minor incorrect detail, about Johnny Olson announcing during Cerf's first appearance, when Olson didn’t join the show until many years later), followed by some fleeting references to the show here and there, but not much.

The most interesting anecdote about What’s My Line? is how Cerf “really wanted to win, and worked at it,” Feldman writes. In order to suss out who that Sunday’s celebrity “mystery guest” might be, “he’d sit in his office on a Friday afternoon with gossip columns, theater listings, and Variety spread before him, checking what was on, who was in, what was hot.” To anyone who’s watched the show, that explains why Cerf always seemed to know who happened to be in town and would be available to drop by and appear on the show. (As a viewer, I’d have to say that didn’t make for good TV - it emphasized gamesmanship over game-playing, and spoiled the fun of watching the panel actually figure it out on their own.)

But I grudgingly understand why the book doesn’t have more to say about the show, since this is primarily a book about Random House and Cerf the publisher. Just be warned if you come into these 1,000+ pages expecting more about what most people remember him for.

What the book does do, is use What’s My Line? to illustrate the incongruity of Cerf’s highbrow/lowbrow “double life.” One telling anecdote has him recognized in an airport by an exuberant fan who clearly knows him only from TV. When he mentions he’s on his way to William Faulkner’s funeral, the fan asks, “who?” Another anecdote Feldman unearthed finds Cerf at a dinner party hosted by authors Robert Penn Warren and Eleanor Clark. When he excuses himself to watch that night’s prerecorded episode of What’s My Line?, he’s dismayed to find that not only does the cultured couple not own a television set, but they find it “disgusting” that he’d actually leave a party to sit down and watch himself on TV. He ends up going to the next-door neighbors’ house to watch, where he’s feted like the celebrity he sought to be.

Celebrity also led to many Hollywood connections, from his short, ill-fated first marriage to a starlet, to the second marriage that lasted (to a cousin of Ginger Rogers), and his unlikely friendship with the likes of Frank Sinatra - Cerf enjoyed the proximity to superstardom, while Sinatra liked being associated with someone he considered an intellectual.

Back to the book publishing business, though, which truly became a big business over time. Cerf was a serious publisher, but was also serious about being a salesman and a showman, hyping new releases, churning out bestsellers and turning Random House into a powerhouse. The company went public, merged with rivals, and was ultimately bought out by RCA, which Feldman pegs as an end to “the old order of owner-publishers,” and the new era of “corporate or conglomerate control.” After unapologetically helping to turn publishing into a big and profitable business, Cerf died a few years later. The book concludes with a post-Cerf history of Random House, which, after a revolving door of mergers and leaders, still endures.

The book’s length, and level of detail, makes this quite a commitment. I don’t know that I’d recommend it to a casual reader who has never heard of Cerf or has no interest in the book business. But once committed, I found the length and scope of the book got me invested in Cerf’s story and looking forward to what would happen next.

I did have to think about whether I found him likeable in the end. On the surface, he was a charmer and a bon vivant. On a deeper level, he could appear aloof, imperious, avaricious, superficial, and seemingly more devoted to his work, his friends and his public image than he was to his own family. He was an inveterate flirt, and Feldman suggests, but doesn’t appear to have the evidence to state outright, that he sometimes went much further than just flirting.

Nevertheless, I was engrossed throughout. To say that Feldman did her homework is an understatement, as not only did she thoroughly comb the vast archives, she conducted interviews with seemingly everyone still alive who knew Cerf (many of whom have passed away since she began her work), and even had to fact-check Cerf himself, as he was prone to exaggeration, storytelling and relating white lies about his background and family life, so Feldman couldn't take anything he said or wrote about himself at face value.

Ultimately, I came away impressed at Cerf’s fortitude at becoming a multi-hyphenate success, building a business that still stands today, all while dismissing any condescension and criticism that came his way. “As long as he could,” Feldman concludes, “he'd stare straight ahead and hug that lucky multi-lane highway that had brought celebrity and wealth. Paying tolls was the cost of the ride.”

Thanks to NetGalley and publisher Random House (naturally) for providing an advance copy of this book for review, ahead of its release today, January 13th.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A century later, Random House, a brand, glides off the tongue. We hardly consider the literal meaning, or what an odd–inspired–pairing the words are. from Nothing Random

My husband enjoys watching old What’s My Line episodes. He always loved Bennet Cert. I noted Cerf’s round glasses and high voice, not really impressed. But my husband raved about his humor and intelligence.

When I learned that Cerf had created Random House, I was set back on my heels. As soon as I saw this biography, I had to read it.

It is a doorstopper! And I absolutely loved every minute I spent reading it. I loved Cerf, I loved learning about the publishing house he built, and I loved learning about the greater world of publishing and publishers.

I was amazed at what Cerf accomplished. After working for Boni & Liveright, he bought their Modern Library (ML) series, and with his good friend Donald Klopfer, started Random House (RH)–with the idea that they would publish books ‘at random’.

Cerf accomplished miracles, like getting James Joyce’s Ulysses published in America. RH published ‘Bill’ Faulkner and Eugene O’Neill with personal attention and friendship. James Michener was a constant money maker for RH, and later Philip Roth.

Other RH authors included John O’Hara, William Styron, Robert Penn Warren, Shelby Foote, Vladimir Nabokov, Cormac McCarthy, Peter Matthiessen, Joseph Heller, Chaim Potok. Oh, and they published the Shirley Temple Story Book and the Walter Farley Black Stallion books which I loved so much.

Cerf’s wife Phyllis oversaw a new line, Beginner Books, which published Dr. Seuss and the Berenstain’s bear stories that our son loved.

Cerf was a driven workaholic with boundless energy. Liveright provided him a role model as publisher, and he looked up to Alfred Knopf.

Cerf’s joy and humor, the depths he kept hidden, his foibles and his brilliance, come across in countless stories. He was ambivalent about being Jewish, a liberal in his politics.

He hated Ayn rand’s philosophy, but published her books–until she wrote one calling President Kennedy a fascist. He had to back down from excluding Ezra Pound from a poetry anthology.

His beloved uncle was gay. He was enthralled by Gertrude Stein. Truman Capote was a frequent guest in the Cerf household and was especially close to Phyllis Cerf.

He hired an African American receptionist. RH published Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Muhammad Ali’s autobiography, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, and Maya Angelou.

Ah, Bill…I love being alive so much!” Bennet Cerf to William Styron

Cerf loved attention and he gloried in his seventeen years on What’s My Line, wrote numerous humor books and a magazine column, and was friends with the famous, like Frank Sinatra.

Random House flourished, went public, merged with Knopf, Pantheon, was bought by RCA, and in 2012, RH merged with Penguin.

Just a delight of a read!

Thanks to the publisher for a free book through NetGalley.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a comprehensive and fascinating history of publishing through the story of Bennett Cerf, one of the founders of Random House. When Jews are shut out of an industry, we come back stronger and better. Another American Dream success story.

[Annie Reads The World · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this ARC.

Wow, this was such a great book! It was very long and it clearly involved a ton of research, truly an impressive feat!

I didn't know much about Bennett Cerf before this book, but I found the topic super interesting. I really loved learning not just about his life, but about the whole publishing industry at the time.

There were so many interesting tidbits in this book, I feel like I learned something neat/read something funny on pretty much every page, which to me very much justified the length if this book.

I also really loved the included pictures, always helps to have those in a nonfiction book.

I would genuinely recommend this book to anyone interested in the publishing industry because it truly has so much information, you won't be disappointed!

[Michael Reilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bennett Cerf was 27 years old when he co-founded Random Books in 1925. He was the CEO until he died in 1971. By then, it was one of the largest publishing companies in the world. It had acquired many of the competing companies over the years.

Cerf was also a celebrity. For sixteen years he was a panelist on the hit TV quiz show, "What's my Line?". He wrote multiple bestselling collections of funny stories and jokes. He was buddies with Frank Sinatra, George Gershwin, Adlai Stevenson and many more celebs. His dinner parties were famous.

As a publisher he became an advisor and friend to many of his authors. Famous authors tend to be difficult. Cerf had to tend to and protect both Eugene O'Neil and Willan Faulkner when they went on their drinking binges. He had to massage Ayn Rand's massive ego. He published Joyce's "Ulysses" in America and won the court case trying to ban it.

This very long biography is an example of what happens when a very busy and significant life is combined with a huge amount of source material. Cerf kept a daily diary for most of his professional career. Publishing is a profession which breeds letters between authors and publishers. Most of the important people in this book have written memoirs or left archives. There is also a healthy collection of oral histories by this crowd.

Gayle Feldman appears to have read all of the material. She has done an amazing job of weaving it into a coherent story with some structure. At the beginning of the book, she has a very helpful "Key to Major Characters", with a couple of sentences on who they are. To give a sense of how much territory is covered in the book, there are approximately 95 "Major Characters" listed.

I found the first half of the book much more interesting than the second. That was a function of how Cerf's job changed. When Random House started, Cerf was dealing with authors. He was trying to attract new writers like Gertrude Stein and Truman Capote. By the 1950s, Random was becoming a conglomerate. Cerf focused on doing deals to gobble up and then merge with other companies. He was also a full-blown celebrity who lived in a world of parties and ceremonies. It was glamorous, but I didn't find it that interesting.

This is also a social history of fifty years in America. The Jazz Age, the Depression, WW2, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War all had profound effects on the publishing world. Feldman does a very good job of setting the scene for each of these developments and tracking how they effected Cerf and his business.

One of the other interesting themes in the book is Judaism in the publishing world. When Cerf began, the high-end publishing industry was a blue blood world where Jews were not welcome. Cerf faced closed doors but worked around them. When he and his partner started, there one real asset was The Modern Library series which they had purchased. They gradually worked into becoming a front-line publishing company. Feldman speculates on whether part of his ability to break into Gentile worlds was that he didn't "look Jewish".

Cerf was a complicated guy. He was a bon-vivant who charmed people. He was suspect in the publishing world because he appeared on TV and wrote low-brow joke books. He was a fair businessman, but he prided himself on deal making and got great enjoyment out of cutting a sharp deal. He never accepted the first offer. He was married to Phylis Fraser for 31 years but seems to have been a serious philanderer.

This is a full-blown life and times biography. It is 1032 pages long, including 140 pages of notes. Feldman admits that her editors convinced her to cut more than 500 pages to get to this length. I wish it were shorter, but it was interesting enough that I stuck with it to the end.

Two stories that amused me. (The book is full of good stories involving writers, celebrities and publishers)

- John O'Hara was a wildly insecure writer. He was bitter about not getting into Princeton as F. Scott Fitzgerald did. William Faulkner, who was no fan, said the O'Hara was "a mere Rutgers Scott Fitzgerald".

-Norman Mailer got into an argument with Cerf at a party. They were screaming at each other. Mailer finally ended the argument by saying "You are a dentist!". Later a friend asked what that meant. Mailer explained, "Every Jewish parent wants his son to become a doctor. If he becomes a dentist, he's second rate. Cerf understood me."

[Joni Daniels · Rating 3 out of 5]

Where was the Editor!? You’ll learn about Bennett Cerf, the creation of Random House, antisemitism, cultural history from 1910 on and the social, literary, and artistic circles of decades but be prepared to get inundated with every fact unearthed from diaries, journals, and records. Daily and hourly information! I love books, TV, theater, and cultural/social history so I was eager to learn more - but there is so much minutia. I started skimming portions of the book. Every lunch, every party, every conversation is in here — hundreds and hundreds of pages of it. Spoiler alert: Cerf wasn’t taken seriously because he wrote joke books and he wanted to be a celebrity which at the time was not what the giants of industry and any great artist did.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I guess I’m showing my age by even knowing who Bennett Cerf was. This book certainly dusted off a LOT of cobwebs and learn about the founding of Random House. This publishing house is responsible for some of the U.S.’s most famous authors such as William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill, James Michener, Truman Capote, and Theodor Seuss Geisel,.
Fascinating to this bibliophile.

[Bookreporter.com Biography & Memoir · Rating 5 out of 5]

In NOTHING RANDOM, noted writer and book reviewer Gayle Feldman paints a dynamic portrait of Bennett Cerf. A widely known and respected book publisher, Cerf’s vibrant personality and unusual perspicacity are amply demonstrated in this assiduous, richly detailed biography that is over 20 years in the making.

Born in 1898 and raised in Manhattan, Cerf was fascinated by books early in life. He graduated from Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1919 and a Bachelor of Literature from its School of Journalism the following year.

Not long after completing his studies, Cerf was appointed vice president of the book publisher Boni & Liveright. In collaboration with his friend and business partner, Donald S. Klopfer, he purchased the company’s Modern Library. The resulting corporation would become Random House, its name a strong clue to his personal whims and sense of humor, which never waned.

Cerf was constantly propelled by an instinct for literary quality and a spontaneous yet sage personality that added to his success as a well-known character. As Feldman says, “He loved ‘being known’, the recognition a necessary nourishment that seemed to give him a high-wattage glow.”

Cerf continually demonstrated the power behind his profession through his ability to see the value in books and authors that otherwise might have been overlooked. He encouraged such fame-destined writers as Theodor Seuss Geisel, whose pen name was Dr. Seuss; Ayn Rand, despite her controversial political views; and literary giants like William Faulkner, James A. Michener and Truman Capote.

After Random House had published many humorous collections, Cerf joined the panel of the iconic series “What’s My Line?” in 1951. For the next 16 years, he brought to the attention of a wide audience his seemingly irrepressible, vast storehouse of lively opinions melded with soon-popular jokes and jibes.

Cerf’s personal and professional lives form a well-charted background to his time spent in the limelight, which concluded with his passing in 1971. It is clear that Feldman --- who has written and edited for Publishers Weekly and contributed to the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Times of London --- has devoted much time and deep dedication to this remarkable portrait. Pointing out that it is rare for the average reader to know the names of the personalities behind publications, she reveals through her impressive research the ambitious, brilliant, multitalented and generally amiable founder of Random House.

Feldman asserts that throughout his career Cerf had “allowed that light, bright scrim of celebrity to define so much of his own life.” He might have faded from the annals of time had she not taken on this admirable task. Since she has done so, his name, unique abilities and worthy accomplishments have been granted new, well-deserved attention.

Reviewed by Barbara Bamberger Scott

[Michael Ritchie · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5 stars--I'd love to have given this 5 stars, but I can't) I'm a perfect audience member for this book. I remember Bennett Cerf as a panelist on TV's What's My Line, and as the head of Random House which was probably the biggest publisher in the country for much of the last half of the 20th century (rivaled only by Simon & Schuster). I worked in retail bookselling for many years so am familiar with much of the publishing history the author covers here, not just Random but the houses it merged with, like Knopf and Pantheon. Plus I have recently read At Random, Cerf's own quasi-memoir (the book, published several years after his death, is made up mostly of passages from an oral history he contributed to).

This book has lots of problems. First, it's trying (as the author admits in an afterword) to be several things: the editor who signed the book up in 2002--who has since passed away--thought of it as a celebration of Random House; the author was thinking of it primarily as a biography; it also winds up being a pop culture history of the American book business. All of those are admirable goals, but at over 800 pages (not counting another 200 pages of footnotes and an admirably complete index), it's just way too much to plow through. I don't have much of a head for business so I skimmed most of the sections on mergers and such, but even just focusing on Cerf's life, there is so much minutiae here that I grew bored. It feels like we hear about every single business lunch he had, every party he and his wife threw, every celebrity he interacted with. Feldman did a huge amount of impressive research, but it seems like she couldn't decide what to leave in or take out, so having twenty years so put it together, she left it all in. (Not true, however, as she says she cut some 500 pages from her original manuscript!!)

I don't want to sound too negative. I did make it to the end and I loved learning a lot about Cerf and Random House (and people like Alfred Knopf, Truman Capote, Frank Sinatra, and William Faulkner). But it's overwhelming. Feldman is fairly good at keeping things in chronological order, though there were times, especially in the last half, when I had to skip back 10 or 20 pages to find out what year we were in. Much of the first half amplifies anecdotes from At Random, which was welcome, but there is a lot of repetition of the theme of Cerf not being taken seriously by history because 1) the books he actually wrote were joke and humor books, and 2) his need to be a celebrity (largely due to What's My Line) was thought by some to be inappropriate for his lofty position. Ultimately, I would recommend this--if you want to know about Bennett Cerf, this is really the only place to go--but not for a casual reader who doesn't already have some background in the history of the publishing business.

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gayle Feldman’s “Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built” is a remarkable book. It’s much more than a mere biography of Cerf; it’s a history of American book publishing from the 1940’s to the 1970’s, publishing reflecting the major events of those times—wars, civil rights, the heyday of newspapers, the “Red” scare, the social upheavals of the sixties and so on. Feldman has captured the life of an exceptional publisher and his times so well that, even at over 800 pages, the book feels like it could have been expanded even further. Starting with their acquisition of the Modern Library series of classic reprints, Bennett Cerf and Don Klopfer created Random House. Its progression to becoming a major book publisher from the era of publisher-owners to going public, merging with other publishers and becoming part of a larger corporation is seamlessly woven with the personal life of co-founder Cerf. Feldman points out that Cerf loved attention and publicity; he became an unusual figure, a publisher-celebrity. Due to his many columns and humor collections and, more importantly, his presence as a panelist on the Sunday night game show “What’s My Line?” Cerf became very well-known and beloved to the American public. His popularity prompted a reverse snobbery among intellectuals who downplayed his literary contributions. But there are so many great authors that Cerf published and promoted, that it is hard to imagine American literature in the 20th Century without acknowledging its debt to him and Random House. Authors that he published included Ayn Rand, Budd Schulberg, Eugene O’Neill, Gertrude Stein, James Michener, James Joyce, John O’ Hara, Moss Hart, Philip Roth, Ralph Ellison, Truman Capote, Theodor Seuss Geisel, William Faulkner and William Styron, among others. The stories behind acquiring these authors and promoting their works make for fascinating reading, even if the authors themselves sometimes exhibited bad behavior (Rand, O’Hara and Faulkner come to mind). Feldman started this book in 2002, and it finally published in 2026; it may initially seem overly ambitious in scope, but the author manages to successfully delineate and untangle the threads of the life of a brilliant publisher and his oversized imprint on 20th century literature. Highly recommended.

[Mshelton50 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to read this biography of Bennett Cerf, as I was interested in the publisher of William Faulkner and William Styron, among many others. Cerf founded Random House with Donald Klopfer, and the book offers an excellent look at the publishing industry in the 20th century -- to give just one example of the many tidbits the book contains, from it I learned that the paperback book really took off with the Armed Services Editions sent to America's soldiers and sailors during World War II. Cerf himself was dismissed by many as a lightweight, esp. after he began to appear as a panelist on the TV quiz show, "What's My Line." But as Gayle Feldman points out, Cerf was a shrewd businessman, one with a discerning eye for new authors (e.g., he backed Truman Capote from early on in his career). He also foresaw the need for amalgamation in the industry (he engineered the acquisition of Alfred A. Knopf, among others). The book is highly informative and very well written. Also, I'm pleased to note that the copy editors at Random House did their co-founder proud -- I found not one typo in the entire 800+ pages.

[A Jolly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to read this book because I'd found old episodes of "What's My Line" on youtube, where Cerf was a weekly panelist. I wanted to know more about him. This is a very interesting and captivating book, most of the time. There are parts that sort of drag on, but not so much that you should skip it. Bennett Cerf was probably the most fascinating "influencer" of the 20th Century, that sadly, most people don't know these days. Nor do people know how much Cerf continues to impact their lives. So many books which were published by Random House ended up on high school reading lists eg: Great Gastby, Brave New World, The Sound & the Fury, Catch 22, The Grapes of Wrath, In Cold Blood, The Invisible Man, Atlas Shrugged, 1984, Slaughterhouse-5. This book is a who's who of 20th Century publishing, music, movies & television. Cerf if there was someone to know, Bennett Cerf knew them. It's a good, if not tedious read at times, I would recommend this to anyone who is a student of 20th Cent history. What was Bennett Cerf's line? Everything!

[Mediaman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Monstrous volume that is dramatically overstuffed. There are about 800 pages of narrative but another 200 of end notes and index, along with an extra 38 pages up front with a list of characters and prologue. It's all way too much, with the oddest factoid being that this is a 2026 publication but the author's opening "To the Reader" is signed in 2024, meaning it took over a year just to print.

Bottom line is that a great book is made in the editing and there needed to be many cuts made throughout to be able to better communicate the life story of this important man. I only read the sections I was interested in and found them to be very bloated and basic, nothing special and often lacking in context. The author loves definitions and minute explanations, while adding her own opinions and assumptions about what Cerf did or thought.

The irony of the title is that this is almost "everything Random" in weaving the publishing house throughout, but I found that there were too many truly random inclusions that made it a bit of a wordy bore.

[Holly · Rating 1 out of 5]

First of all, no one warned me that this book was over 1000 pages! Imagine my surprise when I picked it up from the library and it was way thicker than the Bible.

Second of all, how did this book get past all of the editors being that long with so many details and stories that are not very interesting? The first few chapters were decent, but after that, it just got so aimless and disorganized. Had it been all about Cerf and not all the other people, it would have been easier to follow.

I genuinely think the people that gave it a five star rating are just friends with the author and they didn’t actually stumble through the book.

Yikes. Don’t bother with this one. It had SOmuch potential! If the author had cut it down to about 200 pages that were actually interesting, it would have been much more enjoyable. I ended up just skimming through it and even that was painful. There are so many books out there that are more worthy of my time.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

I knew very little about Bennett Cerf aside from his appearances on the television show “What’s My Line” so I looked him up while watching reruns and discovered that he founded Random House. When this book became available, I put it on my must-read list. And I did learn a lot, both about Mr Cerf and about the publishing industry. But at several points I was just overwhelmed by the amount of detail and I would lose track of what I was reading. If I were rating this book on depth of information, I would give it five stars, but ultimately, I rated the book on my enjoyment of it. Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for the advance reader copy.

[Eve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Watching reruns of the 1950’s era What’s My Line game show on cable, I often wondered how the CEO and founder of the world’s most formidable publishing house became a game show panelist, so incongruous are the two worlds. Nothing Random answers that question, offering a detailed look into the life of Bennett Cerf and his creation, the publishing company Random House. Perhaps of most interest to those interested in the publishing world, this book offers a look into one man’s drive to publish great authors (Faulkner, Joyce, Ayn Rand, Dr. Seuss, in much detail) and become a celebrity in his own right.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this via NetGalley.

Wow, what a biography! This was a very long one, but so worth the journey and easy to read over the course of a long period of time. I highly recommend to any book lovers. I knew Bennett Cerf from What’s My Line? and obviously knew he was involved with Penguin-Random House but didn’t realize just how involved he was with so many of today’s classics.

His relationships with the different authors was a particular highlight for me… Eugene ONeill, Gertrude Stein, William Faulkner…

[Chet Makoski · Rating 5 out of 5]

What Bennett Cerf and his business partner, Donald Klopfs, did forming the publishing house Random House was remarkable. Their personal stories were merged with the stories of great writers, O’Neill, Stein, Faulkner, Joyce, Copote, Ellison, Rand, Seuss, Morrison, and many more, was fascinating to learn. New York City, Broadway, TV, Hollywood and politics evolving in the 1920s through the 1970s was a part of the backdrop to this biography.

[Ceil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Delightful insights into the creative ferment of the 20th Century publishing world. 1/2 the length would have been a more compelling book

[Tom Altizer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating recounting of a life well lived.

[Bob Peru · Rating 4 out of 5]

very entertaining. fascinating.

[D · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is everything anyone could hope for in a biography- exhaustively and scrupulously researched and contextualized. Superb..

[Oolookitty · Rating 4 out of 5]

This amazing, detailed biography of Bennett Cerf is really fascinating. I had heard of him and knew him from reruns of television shows from back in the day, and I’m pretty sure we had some of his joke books knocking around the house when I was a kid, but I honestly had no idea of his impact on not only the publishing industry but on American literature itself.

Cerf emerges as a complicated character, who fights hard for his writers and for the books he wants published, but sometimes drops the ball when it comes to family and friends.

I could possibly have done without as much detail of each RH merger and acquisition, but maybe that’s just me.

Lots of great inside information on writers such as William Faulkner, Truman Capote, Jessica Mitford, Eugene O’Neill, Phillip Roth, Ayn Rand (ugh) and also Cerf’s great friend Frank Sinatra.

It’s also interesting how much important work Cerf’s wife Phyllis did for RH, including how instrumental she was creating Beginner books with Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss), and how often her work was erased or overlooked. I credit these books as a huge influence in my own learning to read, so thank you, Phyllis.

Got this as an advance copy from NetGalley but I will be purchasing this for my Library.

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

My full review is on the Open Letters Review website at https://openlettersreview.com/posts/n....