With me today on Writers at Work is Gayle Feldman, author of NOTHING RANDOM: BENNETT CERF AND THE PUBLISHING HOUSE HE BUILT. There was a time when Cerf, co-founder of Random House, was a household name in America. In a massive and meticulously researched biography, and thoroughly enjoyable, I should add, Gail tells us how he came to be that and more. In doing so, she also tells us how publishing prospered in Cerf's time when books were at the center of American cultural life. Gail is the perfect writer for the task.

She's written for Publishers Weekly for some 40 years, including serving as a senior staff editor, and is now the US correspondent for The Bookseller, the British magazine that covers the book business. Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the LA Times, The Times of London, and The Nation, and more.

Across its 1,000-plus pages, Gail puts us in close contact with James Joyce, William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, Eugene O'Neill, Truman Capote, James Baldwin, Ezra Pound, Sinclair Lewis, John O'Hara, Philip Roth…you get the picture. Not as celebrities, but as writers dealing with getting their distinctive books to the public in the best way possible.

Thus, for all the luminaries in NOTHING RANDOM, none shine brighter on the page than Bennett Cerf. Was he actually all that? Let's find out.