Our old friend Albert Lerman (in the picture above, he’s the grunt with the cigarette in his mouth greeting Russian soldiers at the Elbe River in Germany), discusses the drafting of the entire freshman and sophomore classes from Penn into the Army gearing up to fight WWII; the hell of war for the soldiers (“you know, the guy beside you, all of a sudden, he ain’t alive anymore. That’s tough. That’s tough”), including the misery of living in foxholes, and for the German civilians as well (“absolutely, war is hell for them too, the people that we flushed out of these houses were women and children“); his war injuries; the historic meeting of U.S. and allied Russian forces at the Elbe River; the preference of the Germans to surrender to American forces (“they were deathly afraid of the Russians”); his extended honeymoon with Evelyn after the war; and his hope for the U.S. to avoid war in the future. (Click on image above for additional content.)

Click on the image above for the transcript of my interview for The Overlook, community journalism serving Hunter, Hurley, Olive, Saugerties, Shandaken, and Woodstock, New York, on October 24 2025, ofstoryteller Martha Frankel, a memorist, essayist, celebrity profiler, book editor and reviewer, and founder and producer of Woodstock’s BookFests and Story Slams. (Photo Credit: Dion Ogust)

Click on the image above for the transcript of my interview for The Overlook, community journalism serving Hunter, Hurley, Olive, Saugerties, Shandaken, and Woodstock, New York, on August 15, 2025, of Elizabeth Lesser, bestselling author and the cofounder of Omega Institute, the renowned conference and retreat center located in Rhinebeck, New York. 

A condensed and edited version of this interview was published on September 19, 2025, in The Overlook, and my interview with Elizabeth can be heard on my podcast, “Tell Me What You’re Reading”, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever else you listen to podcasts.

Howard Altarescu

Susan Brown is a professional editor, writing coach, and book doctor. She’s had forty years of teaching college creative writing and book editing, and has guided dozens of books into print as an editor, and as a writing coach.

Susan and I discussed her Secrets of the Great Writers Workshop, James Hall’s Hit Lit - Cracking the Code of the 20th Century’s Biggest Bestsellers and James Joyce’s Ulysses. We discussed storytelling and I loved the discussion.

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Publishing just now in November a podcast I recorded six months ago with one of the very interesting people I meet walking on Upper Byrdcliffe Road in Woodstock. One day as we were passing the Byrdcliffe Theater, our friend Neil introduced me to Jenni Knight, an artist in residence at the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony. Jenni is a Bard MFA grad with a background in sculpture, drawing, painting as well as working with New York City experimental culture institutions. Previously Jenni’s been in residence at the Mount Lebanon Residency at the Shaker Museum in New York, and in Sweden in a program funded by the Swedish Arts Council. Jenni also teaches periodically and has run an artist space in the City. Jenni is currently writing about bodily integrity. 

As often happens, one thing led to another and I asked Jenni if there was a book she was reading that she would like to discuss on the podcast. Jenni chose Autoportrait by Édouard Levé, a book consisting of 112 pages of mostly unconnected sentences, both very long and very short sentences, all in just one paragraph; a stream of consciousness exercise perhaps.

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Jeffrey Gurock, Professor of Jewish History at the Graduate School of Jewish Studies of Yeshiva University, and an internationally-recognized expert in the discipline of American Jewish history, is the author of a new comprehensive biography of the premier voice of New York sports from the 1940s through the 1990s.

Marty Glickman, The Life of an American Jewish Sports Legend is a sweet, sweet, bittersweet biography. Romania, the Bronx and Brooklyn, the example set by Hank Greenberg and by Sandy Koufax, Glickman’s high school and college track and football glory, college quotas limiting the number of Jews, the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, the Jews who were precipitously excluded from the track competition, including Glickman, American Nazis (truly, American Nazis), the great and courageous Jesse Owens, and a phenomenal sportscasting career for a gracious and generous gentleman. Really terrific.This all deeply resonated for me and.I loved the book and our podcast discussion,.

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Elizabeth Lesser discussed on my Podcast the founding by Elizabeth and her first husband of Omega Institute - internationally recognized for its wellness, spirituality, creativity, and social change workshops and conferences - as well her beautiful and inspiring books about finding protection and blessings in the broken moments of our lives; enjoying the passage of time; realizing what we have in life; appreciating every moment we are alive - Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow - and about being present to each moment; being who you are, answering the call of your soul, authenticity; unconditional love; learning to avoid straining against pain; being impeccable with our words; understanding that the only purpose of life is to shine the light you were given - Marrow: Love, Loss & What Matters Most. Elizabeth also discussed Thornton Wilder’s classic play, Our Town, and Ann Pachette’s magnificent novel, Tom Lake, and the themes they share with her books. 

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I enjoyed talking with Amy Shearn and Hannah Oberman-Breindel this summer when they were in the Artist-in-Residence writing program at Woodstock’s Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, and even more so on our recent podcast discussion of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, which is considered to be one of the great literary masterpieces of the twentieth century. 

I had not previously read any Virginia Woolf and I had not studied literary modernism. Despite being uninitiated, I was struck by the way Woolf captured the human condition and, in a realistic way, the unstructured non-linear thought processes of her characters. Really great!

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Our Woodstock friend Carol Graham recently told me that her new book was just about to be published. She said something like, “Howard, this is not like one of the big, great fiction books you read, this is a ‘cozy’“. I had no idea at the time what a “cozy” was. but I do now. 

British crime novelist and detective fiction writer, P. D. James has been credited with saying  that “All fiction is largely autobiographical”.

Carol is a Texan but has lived in Brooklyn and Woodstock for the last 21 years, and is now a real estate agent in both areas.  Carol’s newly published book, Passion! In Park Slope features a Texas born Brooklyn real estate agent who has not lost her drawl. Coincidental or autobiographical?

We discussed Carol’s new book as well as “cozy” mysteries on our recent podcast discussion.

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In commemoration of Cormac McCarthy, who died in June, Woodstock friend and neighbor, David Gordon and I discuss McCarthy’s “poetically dark” novel, The Road. Published in 2006, The Road is a dystopian, post-apocalyptic and frightening warning, but it’s also a story of the love between a father and a son and of the lengths to which a father might travel for his son, literally and figuratively. It’s emotional, chilling and beautifully written. “Tell Me What You’re Reading”, wherever you listen to podcasts.

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On the podcast, Kelly M O’Brien, a visual artist and an Artist-in-Residence at Woodstock’s Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, discusses her installation, which is called "Ecotopia Conversation”, and its relationship to the 1975 novel “Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston”, by Ernest Callenbach. “Ecotopia” describes a utopian world created by the secession in 1980 of Oregon, Washington and Northern California from the United States. It was a cult novel at the outset, and over the years became required reading as environmental studies took off. 

We truly had an Ecotopia Conversation.

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Steph Kent, co-founder, with her husband Logan Smalley, of the Call Me Ishmael project joined me to discuss Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell, the book I have recommended more than any other over the last few years. 

Hamnet is a work of fiction, but it’s based in part on certain core facts on which O’Farrell builds this beautiful, devastatingly sad story, albeit with a sweet ending, of the impact of Hamnet’s death on his family, and its relationship to the writing of Hamlet.

The book is a master class in the use of detail to tell a story, and the production of Hamlet produces a beautiful, poetic and moving conclusion. I frequently describe Hamnet as one of the best books I have ever read.

Steph and Logan’s Call Me Ishmael project invites readers to celebrate the books they love. Anyone can call Ishmael at 774.325.0503 and leave an anonymous voicemail message about their favorite book. Thousands of readers have called and over a million readers have listened to this library of stories. 

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A well told and important story about the reaction to a federal court order in 1974 requiring the busing of children to integrate the Boston public schools, and of the racism, poverty, addiction, crime, fear, hatred, ignorance and exploitation of the South Boston community. Provocative, repulsive, infuriating. Vivid as well. Lehane’s depiction of his protagonist, Mary Pat Fennessy:

“one look at her baby pictures and childhood snap shots, all scrunched face and wide shoulders and small powerful body, ready to audition for the roller derby or some shit – looks like she came off a conveyor belt for tough Irish broads.”

An ugly, dark story. A little more than halfway through, I gasped and had to shut the book. An hour later, I was able to catch my breath and get up the courage to return. Lehane himself has said, “the book, in the middle, gets pitch black“. No kidding. 

And then, by way of contrast, there’s murder Detective Bobby Coyne, who has seen the darkest part of humanity but is a loving father and an oasis of hope and tenderness. Lehane writes that Bobby, sitting with his son after his son’s skateboarding accident, “must confront what he has grasped intellectually since the moment he first held his son in the maternity ward . . .

I can’t protect you. 

I can do what I can, teach you as much as I know. But if I’m not there when the world comes to take its bite – and even if I am – there’s no guarantee I can stop it. 

I can love you, I can support you, but I can’t keep you safe. 

And that scares the ever-living shit out of me. Every day, every minute, every breath.”

(My sentiments as well.)

A timely story, unfortunately, and a heartbreakingly difficult but great read. (A Golden Notebook book club pick.)

My friend Tony Wolf and I discussed “Tales From The Wolf”, Tony’s memoir about his years living in Greenpoint, and including a compilation of his  New York Times “food cartoon” features, his superhero stories, a moving 9/11 tribute, and Trump era political cartoons. “Tales From The Wolf” can be purchased here. Tony is a cartoonist, an actor (including on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), a singer, film director, and illustrator. He’s essentially a storyteller, a journalist at heart. Tony’s website.

We discussed Tony’s cartooning journey from the time he was a young child, his cartoonist role models, and how he “unwittingly created a new genre in the New York Times food section … a whole new world of visual comics about food.”

This is one wide ranging discussion, longer than my usual but great fun. Hope you enjoy it. “Tell Me  What You’re Reading”, wherever you listen to podcasts. #bookwormsinthewild

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Our discussion about Erica Obey’s mystery novel, the Brooklyn North Murder, turned into a discussion of The Typology of Detective Fiction, by Bulgarian-French historian, philosopher, and literary theorist Tzvetan Todorov, a discussion about AI bots, their invasion into the publishing industry, plagiarism charges, and what it means for a book to be ghost written. We discussed Mountweazels, the dark web, The Chronicles of Narnia, early 19th century English aristocrat, publisher and linguist, Lady Charlotte Guest, locked-room murder mysteries, plotters and pantsers, and Erica’s “chaotic” writing style. We also conducted a ChatGPT experiment. Rabbit holes abound.

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Tom Vartanian, Executive Director of the Financial Technology and cybersecurity Center and former Chairman of the American Bar Association’s Cyberspace Law Committee, pulls no punches as he vividly and colorfully, and also convincingly, describes our cyber security vulnerabilities. As he explains, we are living on the razor’s edge between prosperity and devastation; the possibility of a digital Pearl Harbor, of a geopolitical D-day, of a technological and geopolitical tsunami, and of systemic vulnerabilities, including to our entire financial system, with the risk of a financial meltdown and economic annihilation, and also, among other things, vulnerability to the world’s food supply. 

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Artist Katherine McKenna’s memoir, The Paleontologist's Daughter, discusses her father’s work as a paleontologist, including at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and of her own field work out West with her father when she was very young. Katherine’s artistic journey started with what she was exposed to at a very young age, and what she learned at the side of her father. Her memoir is as much a beautiful tribute to her father as it is a recounting of her early years. She writes that she will always be grateful for what her Dad instilled in her – “the curiosity, the adventure, the need to grow, to be the idiosyncratic person who gravitates toward the unorthodox”. 

Katherine discusses with me the exploratory, adventure and sometimes death defying trips her Dad took her family on and how those tripos set the stage for he to become the artist  she is today.

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It felt almost historic to be at the New York Public Library to hear Robert Caro talk about his writing career and particularly his relationship with his editor of 50 years Robert Gottlieb. Much of Caro’s work on his Robert Moses biography, “The Power Broker” took place right here at the library about 50 years ago. The relationship between Caro and Gottlieb is the subject of a documentary, “Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb”, directed and produced by Gottlieb's filmmaker daughter Lizzie Gottlieb.

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