09/11/2026
BENNETT CERF AND THE PUBLISHING HOUSE HE BUILT
Monday Oct 5, 2026 1:00pm
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
At midcentury, everyone knew Bennett Cerf: witty, beloved, middle-aged panelist on What’s My Line? whom TV brought into America’s homes each week. But they didn’t know that the handsome, driven, paradoxical young man of the 1920s had vowed to become a great publisher and, a decade later, was. 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 business: what was published, and how. In 1925, he and Klopfer 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, James Michener, and many more.
Join YIVO for a discussion with Gayle Feldman about her book Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built, in a discussion moderated by Jonathan Brent.
Gayle Feldman, in a conversation moderated by Jonathan Brent, details how Bennett Cerf, co-founder of Random House, transformed American publishing and became one of its most influential cultural figures.
