Events & News
Dates, times, and venues may be subject to change. Please confirm in advance.
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- New York, NY
- at 5:30 PM
- In conversation with Madeline McIntosh, co-founder of Authors Equity, on the history and changing roles of women in publishing, sponsored by Women's Media Group
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- Sag Harbor, NY
- The Church at 4:00 PM
- In conversation with journalist Cathleen McGuingan (ticketed event)
- More details
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- Philadelphia, PA
- Online via Zoom (The Rosenbach Museum and Library) at 6:00 PM
- Annual Bloomsday Virtual Talk: "Liberating Ulysses"
- More details
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- Norfolk, CT
- Norfolk Country Club
- In conversation with former S&S executive Michael Selleck (private event)
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- New York, NY
- City College of New York at 1:00 PM
- Quest lecture
- More details
News updates and media appearances.
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April 4, 2026: Review of Nothing Random in New York Sun
The New York Sun has published a glowing review of Nothing Random. Carl Rollyson writes:
“Gayle Feldman has produced a magisterial account of one of the great American publishers and the industry he built up… she has provided extraordinary insights into the business of publishing and what it takes to produce significant books that might not sell well to begin with but that, in the long run, accrue in a publisher’s profits and prestige. Ms. Feldman has done the hard, diligent work in archives, a labor in this case that took decades, and included hundreds of interviews and, as I know firsthand, just as many or more casual, informal conversations with authors and others in the book business to produce her authoritative and compelling biography. The result is a portrayal not only of a singular individual but of an industry and period of time in the history of publishing… So much detail threatens to congest many biographies, however worthy, but Ms. Feldman has employed her facts and perceptions in a lively narrative that never flags. Above all, I have to admire her persistence to get the story right. She has done justice not just to Cerf but to all of those figures who contributed to the success of a great publishing house.”
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March 18, 2026: Video from Silurians Press Club event with Kai Bird
- March 7, 2026: Instagram video from Square Books in Oxford, MS, praising Nothing Random
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March 3, 2026: Video from CUNY Graduate Center Biography Seminar in New York
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February 12, 2026: Video from Barnes & Noble event in New York
With gratitude to the bookseller at Barnes & Noble, Fifth Avenue, New York!
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Jan 30, 2026: Wall Street Journal reviews Nothing Random: “He Was His Own Bestseller”
Timothy Farrington writes:
“Bennett Cerf’s Random House went from scrappy startup to publishing giant. Along the way, Cerf became a celebrity.”
“Cerf…made his persona inseparable from his company….[He] was fun and charismatic, a jokester and bon vivant. He loved glitz and loved to belong…. Cerf burnished his own fame with chatty magazine columns about the literary world…as well as with a string of joke books…. For all that, he had good taste, or at least an instinct for what would last…. Then in 1966, an aging Cerf sold the firm to the conglomerate RCA, parent of NBC. Ms. Feldman’s account…is gripping.”
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Jan 20, 2026: Jewish Book Council reviews Nothing Random
Stephen Whitfield has penned a lovely review of Nothing Random, writing:
“[P]acked with dazzlingly described episodes and engrossing portraits, based on research for which the adjective ’exhaustive’ could have been coined (though it barely seems adequate). Her narrative gifts make mid-Manhattan publishing downright exciting. Feldman interprets Cerf’s career as singular.”
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Jan 18, 2026: New York Times reviews Nothing Random
Alexandra Jacobs has penned a lovely review of Nothing Random for The New York Times: “He Put Dr. Seuss, Ayn Rand and ‘Ulysses’ on Your Bookshelves”
“Swing open the saloon doors: There’s a new ‘Power Broker’ in town. For surely the story of the publishing behemoth Random House, told through its charismatic co-founder Bennett Cerf, is as worthy of crossing the thousand-page mark as the story of how Robert Moses bulldozed New York. Books are just as much part of the city’s infrastructure as highways and housing developments.
“And this one, ‘Nothing Random,’ by the veteran Publishers Weekly reporter Gayle Feldman, is as delightful as it is hefty.”
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Jan 12, 2026: “Truman Capote, Bennett Cerf, and the Making of In Cold Blood,” an excerpt from Nothing Random
Lit Hub has published an excerpt from Nothing Random, focused on how Random House brought Capote’s magnum opus to bookshelves across america.
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Jan 11, 2026: Gayle interviewed for “Keen on America”
Andrew Keen sat with Gayle for a conversation about Nothing Random and the history it documents:
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Jan 9, 2026: Washington Post review of Nothing Random
The Washington Post has published a glowing review of Nothing Random. Michael Dirda writes:
“Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built isn’t just a biography. In its pages, Gayle Feldman depicts a lost world, at times a lost paradise, when New York, Hollywood and the literary life were at their most glamorous and privileged. It’s quite a story… Through years of research, careful fact-checking…and an insider’s insight, coupled with cool evenhandedness, Feldman brings to life not only a pivotal figure in publishing but also the era he was so much a part of. To do this, Nothing Random mixes anecdotes about writers behaving badly, analyses of corporate wheeling and dealing, and scenes of hedonistic excess. It’s unquestionably a work of biographical reclamation but also a whole lot of fun — which is just what Cerf would have wanted.”
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Jan 8, 2026: Boston Globe review of Nothing Random
The Boston Globe has reviewed Nothing Random in a combined review with Gerald Howard’s The Insider. Wendy Smith calls it an “astute portrait…instructive…intelligent, exhilirating.”
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Dec 30, 2025: New York Times includes Nothing Random in books for January 2026
NYT has published their recommended reading list for January 2026, writing of Nothing Random:
Bennett Cerf, the co-founder of Random House who published everyone from Gertrude Stein and William Faulkner to Truman Capote, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison and Dr. Seuss, was as legendary a wit and bon vivant as he was a literary figure. Feldman’s comprehensive biography paints a vivid portrait of the man, 20th-century New York and the golden age of American publishing.
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Dec 16, 2025: An Excerpt from Nothing Random in Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly is running an excerpt from Nothing Random, available on their website, “Patriotism and Profit at Random House During World War II.”
Read the full excerpt online -
Nov 14, 2025: A Q&A with Gayle Feldman, Publishers Weekly
Henry Carrigan talked with author Gayle Feldman about the research and writing of Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built.
Read the full article onlineWhat drew you to Bennett Cerf?
I discovered that there was this huge Random House archive and the Cerf archive at Columbia University. I remembered Cerf from when I was a kid and watched him on TV, on the show What’s My Line? I thought you could tell the story of 20th-century publishing through Cerf’s life. I did a proposal and sent it to Bob Loomis at Random House, whom Cerf had hired, and asked if he could tell me if I was on the right track. A couple of days later, he phoned me and told me he had sent my proposal to one of Bennett’s sons, Christopher Cerf, who liked it. But I had no idea what I had taken on: I signed the contract in the autumn of 2002, 23 years ago.