Jen Maxfield is an Emmy® Award winning correspondent for NBC 4 New York. She covers breaking news and general assignment stories in New Jersey, and is a fill-in anchor on all of NBC 4 New York’s newscasts. Jen has covered many of the Tri-State area’s most memorable and powerful stories throughout her long career.

More After the Break describes her initial reporting and follow up many years later for the 2003 Staten Island ferry crash, Katrina and Sandy in 2005 and 2012, a 2011 horrendous hit and run casualty, and several other accidents, tragedies and moving stories. The stories themselves are compelling, but mostly I loved Jen’s honesty, and her humility and introspection; the way she expressed the vital role of local news reporters in the community; her bouts of what she referred to as “news guilt”; and her expression of the "moral ambiguity" of her job, while recognizing her professional obligations.

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Hank Neimark and David Aston Reese, the Producing Artistic Director of the Bird-On-A-Cliff Theatre Company in Woodstock, both extraordinarily knowledgeable and enthusiastic Shakespearians, discussed A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s often misguided or misdirected lovers, the Kings and Queens, marriages, and dreams, the irrepressible Bottom and Puck, and the other “mechanicals” and fairies, the play within the play, and the tension between what some think of as one of Shakespeare’s most sexual plays, and also as the one most suitable for children. An unlikely but highly effective combination.

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My guest for this episode is Mark Weeks, a friend and former colleague at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. Mark has practiced law at Orrick in New York and Tokyo for more than 30 years and after many years as a Partner and head of Orrick’s Tokyo office, Mark is now a Senior Counsel at the firm. Mark is also a world class, award winning, international saltwater fly fisherman.

It is said that first novels are at least partly autobiographical, and much of Mark’s debut novel, Bottled Lightning, neatly overlaps with his life and career: a top global technology lawyer and avid motorcyclist, born in Alaska and practicing law in Japan. The objective of our discussion was to discuss Mark’s novel, and we did. However, we talked at least as much about Melville’s Moby Dick, which I had mentioned in my introduction, and about Mark’s writing journey. All great. Thanks Mark!

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My guest for this episode is Trinh Q. Truong. Trinh came to the U.S. from Vietnam with her mother about 20 years ago. During what we in the U.S. refer to as the Vietnam War, Trinh’s grandfather worked for the governments of the Republic of Vietnam and the United States doing intelligence work, mainly mapping the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Most of the rest of her family was engaged during the war years in democratic activism in the country. After Saigon fell in 1975, Trinh’s grandparents and eight of their children—with the exception of Trinh’s mother, who was one year old—were sent to reeducation labor camps for nine years to atone for their wartime allegiances. Trinh herself is a longtime refugee activist in the U.S. and a recent graduate of Oxford in England with a masters degree in refugee and forced migration studies. Trinh and I discussed The Sympathizer , a beautifully written, dark and tragic novel set during and after the war in Vietnam. The book is ultimately an indictment of the French, the Americans and the Vietnamese themselves.

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My 2021 War and Peace Journey. One chapter a day over the course of the year, with @anderlouis, @brianedenton and The Hemingway List podcast community, and also over 85 days at the pace set by @apublicspace, Yiyun Li, and the great #TolstoyTogether community. “Tolstoy Twice!”I learned the benefits of slow reading (and of re-reading), which provided the ability to focus on the details; the joy of reading together with a global community of online commenters; and, mostly, the brilliance of Tolstoy, including his ability to capture in writing the universal and timeless human condition, both in times of war and in times of peace. I discussed the first half of the book on my podcast discussion in August with @brianedenton (Tell Me What You’re Reading) Looking forward to starting my 2022 War and Peace journey, one chapter a day, on January 1. #tolstoytogether #apublicspace #thehemingwaylist #bookwormsinthewild

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My guest for this episode is an old friend and one of the leading financial institutions lawyers in the country over the last several decades, Tom Vartanian. Tom 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 director and professor of law at George Mason University's Scalia Law School Program on Financial Regulation & Technology.

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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 commentary on each chapter. War and Peace was brought to my attention at the beginning of the pandemic when I learned of Princeton Professor Yiyun Li’s online “Tolstoy Together” book club, which contemplated reading 15-16 pages a day in order to complete the novel in 85 days. I didn’t jump on Professor Li’s bandwagon but I’m glad I learned of Brian and his work.
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My friend Jim Finnegan 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.

At one point Shuggie’s older brother reflects on his sadness and his anger, and says, “sadness was better than the anger he felt … . Sadness made for a better houseguest; at least it was quiet, reliable, consistent.” And then another character reflects on the hopelessness of them all, saying, “If ye hope, ye also mope.”

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In July 2018, I sat down with our dear friend Evelyn Lerman, in her cabin on the grounds of her beloved Camp Caribou in Winslow Maine, to discuss the loving biography she wrote about her mother. As you can hear in our podcast discussion, I use the excuse of talking to Evelyn about her book to talk with Evelyn about her own life as well.

Evelyn’s mother was a remarkable woman, as was Ev, who passed away on March 17, 2021, at the age of 95. Our entire family is so blessed to have been a part of Ev and Al’s life. Evelyn was a role model and a friend for us all, but most especially for Carol, whose loving relationship with Evelyn was very special. The Altarescus all feel the pain, Carol most deeply among us, but it was Carol who so wisely referred to this loss as a part of the circle of life. We love the entire Lerman family and know that there are so many wonderful memories to sustain them all.

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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, and others, as well as her writing process. Charlotte also discusses the books she has recently read: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Bronte, Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.

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Tell Me What You’re Reading - Season Three Wrap Up

Season Three of our “Tell Me What You’re Reading” podcast has just wrapped up. Thanks to all my Season Three guests and to all who listened in to one or more of our podcasts. Lots of fun discussions. More to come. Listen to all “Tell Me What You’re Reading” episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever else you get your podcasts Where to Listen

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Ep. #21 Tracy Sidesinger - What My Mother and I Don't Talk About: Fifteen Writers Break the Silence,

Ep. #22 Subway Book Review - Uli Beutter Cohen

Ep. #23 Uli Beutter Cohen: Books that deal with identity and how to find your place in the world

Ep. #24 Iowa Caucuses - 2020 Book Club discussion with Kendra Dodson Breitsprecher

Ep. #25 Camilla Calhoun - The White Moth

Ep. #26 Allen Guy Wilcox - A Gentleman in Moscow

Ep. #27 Rob Chesnut - Intentional Integrity - How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution— and Why That’s Good for All of Us

Ep. #28 Andrew Rice: Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is burning 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City, by Jonathan Mahler

Ep. #29 Andrew Wilcox - Richard Ravitz and Paul Volcker memoirs, Lewis’ The Fifth Risk, JFK, Nixon, and Lepore’s masterpiece, These Truths

Ep. #30 Michael Koryta: The Chill

Recorded in March 2020 just as we were learning about COVID - 19. Apologies for the delayed November 21 publication delay — Michael Koryta, a New York Times-bestselling author of 14 novels, a novella, and multiple short stories, discusses The Chill, a horror/suspense/disaster/ supernatural novel which Michael wrote under the pen name, Scott Carson

The Chill is a story of the fictional town of Galesburg in the Catskill mountains in upstate New York, and about its residents who many years before, generations before, were displaced by the government when the properties where their homes were located were taken to create a reservoir, the Chillewaukee, to meet the water needs of New York City.

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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, 1917‒1956, by Fredrik Logevall; Being Nixon: A Man Divided, by Evan Thomas; and These Truths, A History of the United States, by Jill Lepore

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Andrew Rice of New York Magazine discusses LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE BRONX IS BURNING 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City, by Jonathan Mahler, a historical snapshot of 1977 New York City.

The Democratic mayoral primary election; Yankee season; Son of Sam serial killings; summer heat wave and blackout and subsequent destruction and looting; aftermath of near-bankruptcy of the City in ‘75; Murdoch’s takeover of the New York Post, Breslin, Hamill; Saturday Night Live, Rolling Stone; World of Our Fathers; Tavern on the Green; Windows on the World; etc.

Andrew and I also discuss his own forthcoming book, A Popular History of the Year 2000 in the State of Florida

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Allen Guy Wilcox discusses A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles. Towles’s first novel, “Rules of Civility”, was a New York Times bestseller, and “A Gentleman in Moscow”, his second novel, was on the New York  Times bestseller list for over a year and was included on several “best books“ lists in 2016. 

Allen is the founding Artistic Director of The Theater at Woodshill, a not for profit summer Shakespeare festival in central New York. Allen also runs a tutoring company in New York and works for Happiness Studies Academy which is in Tel Aviv and New York.

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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-law, Alda Innocenti Rafanelli. The tribute is offered in the form of Camilla’s memoir of what was intended to be a sojourn in Italy to pursue her passion for writing, her romance with and marriage to Alda’s son, Aldo and eventually a story of three generations at the villa, Aldo’s grandparents, Elvira and Ugo, Aldo’s parents, Alda and Floro, and finally Aldo and Camiila, and also a number of beloved siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and children.

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Kendra Dodson Breitsprecher, owner and editor of the Dayton Leader newspaper in Dayton, Iowa, and the “very definition of an establishment Democrat”, discusses the books written by Democratic Presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg, John Delaney, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Andrew Yang, and Joe Biden. These are the remaining candidates of those whose books were on the list put together for the 2020 Book Club created by Andrea Phillips, then Vice Chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, to help Iowans, in advance of the February 3 caucuses, to know the presidential candidates better and to provide a forum to discuss the books written by the candidates.

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Uli Beutter Cohen, founder of Subway Book Review (@subwaybookreview) discusses her enthusiasm for five books that she has recently read and that she recommends and that she described as “books that deal with identity and how to find your place in the world”.

These are the essay collection of Korean American artist and activist Alexander Chee (How to Write an Autobiographical Novel); the striking anti-patriarchal manifesto  “with enough rage to fuel a rocket” written by Egyptian American activist Mona Eltahawy (The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls); the semi-autobiographical novel of Vietnamese-American writer Ocean Vuong (On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous); author and illustrator Erin Williams’ “intimate, clever, and ultimately gut-wrenching graphic memoir about the daily decision women must make between being sexualized or being invisible” (COMMUTE - An Illustrated Memoir of Female Shame) and Teen Vogue award-winning columnist; and author of the “Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America” op ed, Lauren Duca’s how to book (How to Start a Revolution: Young People and the Future of American Politics). 

Uli also discussed Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life (“one of the best books on writing”), by Anne Lamott, and also Devotion: Why I Write, by Patti Smith.

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Uli Beutter Cohen, founder of Subway Book Review (@subwaybookreview on Instagram) discussed her New York City based and now global social media project, her love for subways, readers and reading (physical books - “the book is a character itself” - not e-books and certainly not listening to books), her love for New York and New Yorkers (“New Yorkers are the most loving people in the universe. This is one of the best cities that ever existed”).

Subway Book Review is a digital community (+ IRL), with contributors in Washington D.C., London, Berlin, Milan, Barcelona, Mexico City, Sydney, and Santiago. + New York, and has had memorials and birthday celebrations and also a 5th anniversary celebration on the G train.

“Books are a reflection of our identity and the questions that we have about our identity; often people are exploring, through the books they are reading, who am I, who can I become and how am I affecting those around me. How am I affecting my environment, how does my environment perceive me.”

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