Nothing Random

Gayle Feldman

Author and journalist

Gayle Feldman is a journalist who has covered the book publishing industry for decades for Publishers Weekly and The Bookseller, among many other publications. Her new book is Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built, published by Random House with legendary editor Bob Loomis. In this episode, Gayle traces Bennett Cerf’s improbable arc from Jewish Harlem to Columbia University to Wall Street and finally to the founding of Random House.

She tells the stories behind some of the most consequential moments in American publishing history: the legal battle to publish James Joyce’s Ulysses, the creation of The Cat in the Hat and Beginner Books, the publication of Portnoy’s Complaint, and more from the early days of Random House.

INTERVIEWED ON: March 25th, 2026

Books discussed:

Nothing Random by Gayle Feldman

The “exhilarating” (The Boston Globe) 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.

Ulysses by James Joyce

This iconic work of experimental modernism "comes nearer to being the perfect revelation of a personality than any book in existence" (The New York Times).

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand’s magnum opus: a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller.

Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth

Portnoy's Complaint scandalized-and forever changed-American literature." -The Washington Post

“Deliciously funny . . . absurd and exuberant, wild and uproarious . . . a brilliantly vivid reading experience”—The New York Times Book Review

"The novel that made Roth a literary superstar, and it remains his most controversial." -Esquire