Tell Me What You’re Reading

Tom Vartanian discusses his recent book, 200 Years of American Financial Panics - Crashes, Recessions, Depressions, and the Technology That Will Change It All. Tom is the former head of the financial institutions practice at two major law firms; the former General Counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and at the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation; and the former executive directo...

Kate McGloughlin is a painter and printmaker (and storyteller), and during her long career, she has exhibited in notable galleries and museums around the world. Kate is president emeritus of the Board of Directors of the Woodstock School of Art, where she teaches printmaking and landscape painting, including to Carol, and where she directs the Printmaking Studio. Through her paintings, poetry and...

My guest for this episode is Brian E. Denton. Brian has been reading Tolstoy’s great novel War and Peace every year for the last ten years, one chapter a day, which results in a year long read of the 361 chapters. Brian has also produced an e-book titled “War and Peace and A Year of War and Peace”, which includes the full text of the novel as well as Brian’s reflective essays, his insightful comme...

My friend Jim Finnegan (who was my guest on episode #3 of our podcast) discusses Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart; a tough book but a great read. An unfortunate tale of growing up gay in working class poor Glascow with an alcoholic mother; anger, sadness, lack of hope, despair and dependence. Jim and I also discuss Milkman, Ironweed, The Vanishing Half, The Shadow King, Deacon King Kong, The Pope o...

Special Edition (March 31, 2021) Our friend Evelyn Lerman wrote a loving biography titled “A Dressmaker's Threads: The Life and The Legacy of My Russian Immigrant Mother", which was published in 2013. In July 2018, I sat down with Evelyn in her cabin in Winslow Maine to discuss the biography she wrote about her mother. As you will hear, I use the excuse of talking to Evelyn about her book to talk...

Charlotte Cross of Oxford, England is working on a tale of the “Brides of Dracula”, following in the footsteps of other novels that have given voice to “marginalized characters”, characters (usually women) who haven't been given the chance to speak in the originals. These others include The Silence of the Girls, by Pat Barker and Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys. Charlotte discusses those books, an...

Andrew Wilcox discusses So Much to Do: A Full Life of Business, Politics, and Confronting Fiscal Crises, a memoir by Richard Ravitz, former head of the New York State Urban Development Corporation and of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority ; Keeping At It , by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker; The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis; JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917...

Andrew Rice discusses Jonathan Mahler's book, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City, which includes stories of New York City in 1977, the mayoralty race, Cuomo, Koch (Bess Meyerson), Bella, Giuliani, Bloomberg, LaGuardia, The Daily News, The New York Post, New York Magazine, Murdoch (Succession), Breslin, Hamill, Steinbrenner, Re...

Rob Chesnut discusses his new book Intentional Integrity - How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution— and Why That’s Good for All of Us, and explains how intentional integrity and intentional inclusion make companies more attractive to employees and to customers, and make such companies out-performers as well. Rob began his journey in the U.S. Justice Department, including as a federal pr...

Allen Guy Wilcox, founding Artistic Director of The Theater at Woodshill, a not for profit summer Shakespeare festival in central New York, discusses "A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles, an elegant, historical novel in post revolutionary Moscow, expounding on the literature, poetry and classical music of the time, and on the timelessness of friendship, children, parenting, food and wine, and on...

Camilla Calhoun discusses The White Moth, a beautifully told, moving and lovely memoir, both historical and very personal. Much of the story takes place on a 15th century farm villa in Tuscany during very challenging times in Italy, from the 1930s to the 1970s: wars, political upheaval, deprivation, fascism, occupation and change. The book is very much a tribute to Camilla’s rock of a mother-in-la...

When Andrea Phillips, who was then Vice Chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, started a book club to encourage her fellow Iowans to read the books written by the 2020 Democratic party Presidential candidates, my wife Carol and I heard Andrea interviewed on MSNBC. Andrea said that Iowa Democrats take their role in vetting the presidential candidates seriously, and that she hoped the book club would h...

After discussing the Subway Book Review project in our Episode 22, Uli Beutter Cohen and I discussed five books that Uli has recently read and recommends: How to Write an Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee, an essay collection by a Korean American artist and activist; The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy, which has been referred to as a striking anti-patriarchal mani...

For the last five years, Uli Beutter Cohen has been talking with people on New York City subways about the books she sees them reading on the subway. Uli refers to her Subway Book Review as a social media project.  The project now also has contributors in Washington D.C., London, Berlin, Milan, Barcelona, Mexico City, Sydney, and Santiago.  Discussions with subway readers, pictures of the readers...

Tracy Sidesinger, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist in New York City, discusses “What My Mother and I Don't Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence”, edited by Michele Filgate. (“Some of these essays are harrowing, some heartwarming, some — like a lot of mother-child relationships — a mix of both. All of them suggest, though, that if you can talk to your mother, you...

Call Me Ishmael is a New York City-based project that invites readers to call and leave a voicemail message about their favorite book. Thousands of readers have already called and over a million readers have listened to this library of stories. Steph Kent and Logan Smalley are the founders of the Call Me Ishmael project and they are privy to the reading interests of the thousands of people who hav...

While visiting the Golden Notebook bookstore in Woodstock last summer, my daughter Melanie and I met and struck up a conversation with bookseller, author and poet, Gretchen Primack. It turns out that Gretchen is also an educator in a more formal sense. Gretchen has taught and/or administrated with prison education programs (mostly college) in maximum security prisons since 2006. Gretchen recently...

In connection with the celebration by my law firm, @Orrick, of Pride Month and the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, I discussed with Alvin Lee and Amy Pasacreta of Orrick The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai, which is a very moving, beautiful and at the same time devastating, award winning novel about the AIDs epidemic in Chicago in the 1980s, its impact on young gay...

A discussion by a serious and thoughtful,reader of four sets of "paired" books - Song of a Captive Bird + The Age of Light/ Churchill & Orwell: The Fight for Freedom + East West Street: On the Origins of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide/ Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll + Fasting and Feasting/ Golden Hill + His Bloody Project - and also Solitary; The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemia...

Sophie McManus (master's degree in fiction writing/ teaching writing at Sarah Lawrence College; author of critically acclaimed novel, The Unfortunates) discusses The Art of Time in Fiction by Joan Silber, and a variety of books written in Classic Time, Long Time, Slowed Time, Switchback Time and Fabulous Time.

Nick Lyons is a lifelong fisherman and has also written 20 highly regarded books about his passion for the outdoors and fly fishing, has edited and published many more, and Nick also for 25 years wrote the Seasonable Angler column for “Fly Fisherman” magazine. Nick’s memoir, Spring Creek, is a love letter to a creek in Montana. In it,  Nick writes that he aims for his writing “to be rich enough to...

Keith discusses three astounding and true tales, as well as internet privacy and manners, and audio books + Springsteen

Alexis Coe discusses Alice + Freda Forever, the book, podcast and movie; also the research and writing process + her forthcoming bio of George Washington.

Dylan Marron discusses “Educated”, the momentous memoir by Tara Westover + wielding softness as strength, empathy on the internet, online and offline personalities and reading audibly.

Joe Polizzotto discusses the works of Elizabeth Strout, Sebastian Barry and other great novelist.