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Nov 19, 2026
Current Affairs: The Future, Made in China
2:00 PM Lilian Gade Room

November 7, 2026 /
We have a fascinating November Current Affairs discussion for you! Our Distinguished Professor of Absolutely Everything, Mark Nunan, will have a presentation inspired by a recent New Yorker article The Future, Made in China | The New Yorker
 The Future Made in China – Evan Osnos – New Yorker.pdf
 in which veteran china journalist Evan Osnos digs into China’s determined strategy to “compete with the U.S. for tech supremacy”. This is not the China we got used to – content to provide cheap labor to manufacture our stuff while swiping our intellectual property for use by its own consumers. Mark has been digging deep into the subject and will lead off with his perspective. We invite all of you to bring your own and join in! Besides the New Yorker article, a list of selected pre-reads that Mark identified is below. I’ve attached pdf’s of those with paywalls (including the New Yorker article).
Our meeting will be Thursday, November 19 at 2PM in the Lilian Gade Room, upstairs at the DCA. Please arrive a few minutes early, since we try to start exactly on time. There is also a Zoom option. The link info is below after the pre-read list.
We can’t wait to hear your thoughts on the China-US-global economic future!
Best,
Barry Silver

Book Club: The Book of Charlie by David Von Drehle
Dec 9, 2026

October 30, 2026 /

One of our nation’s most prominent writers discovers the truth about how to live a long and happy life from the centenarian next door in this “original and highly readable account of a splendid American life” (The Wall Street Journal).When a veteran Washington journalist moved to Kansas, he met a new neighbor who was more than a century old. Little did he know that he was beginning a long friendship—and a profound lesson in the meaning of life. Charlie White was no ordinary neighbor. Born before radio, Charlie lived long enough to use a smartphone. When a shocking tragedy interrupted his idyllic boyhood, Charlie mastered survival strategies that reflect thousands of years of human wisdom. Thus armored, Charlie’s sense of adventure carried him on an epic journey of the Jazz Age, racing aboard ambulances through Depression-era gangster wars, improvising techniques for early open-heart surgery, and cruising the Amazon as a guest of Peru’s president. David Von Drehle came to understand that Charlie’s resilience and willingness to grow made this remarkable neighbor a master in the art of thriving through times of dramatic change. As a gift to his children, he set out to tell Charlie’s secrets. The Book of Charlie is a “genuinely original, formula-shattering” (Bob Woodward) gospel of grit—the inspiring story of one man’s journey through a century of upheaval. The history that unfolds through Charlie’s story reminds you that the United States has always been a divided nation, a questing nation—a nation of Charlies in the rollercoaster pursuit of a good and meaningful life.

Nov 19, 2026
Wander the Highline

October 28, 2026 /

Thursday, November 19, at 8:36 a.m. at Darien Metro-North Station or 8:39 a.m. at Noroton Heights Metro-North Station

On Thursday, November 19th, the Wanderers will travel to Manhattan and wander on and near the High Line beginning in the Meatpacking District and wandering northward through Chelsea before ending in Hudson Yards.  We will take the Metro North train to Grand Central that leaves the Darien train station at 8:36 a.m. and the Noroton Heights train at 8:39 a.m.  As usual, we will gather at the Information Booth on the main floor of Grand Central and proceed together by Subway to Gansevoort Street.

The Wanderers will wander past the impressively designed Whitney Museum of American Art before wandering up onto the well-landscaped High Line and enjoying its picturesque views of Manhattan.  This wandering will include excursions from the High Line to the well-engineered park known as Little Island with its commanding views of the Hudson River and New Jersey and past the very popular indoor food hall known as Chelsea Market. The Wandering will proceed on the High Line through Chelsea to Hudson Yards, a 28-acre Manhattan development mixed use neighborhood featuring the Vessel, luxurious shops and skyscrapers atop an active rail yard.

The Wanderers plan to have lunch at O’Toole’s Way at 518 W. 30th Street, New York, New York 10001 (646-558-5706) in Hudson Yards and conclude with a Wandering around Hudson Yards and to the Hudson Yards Subway Station before returning to Grand Central and home via the Subway and Metro-North.

Contact:  Chet Cobb or Harry Bergen

Book Club: London Falling by Patrick Keefe, Nov 11, 2026

September 9, 2026 /

“From the bestselling, prize-winning author of SAY NOTHING, a powerfully compelling account of a family devastated by the apparent suicide of their nineteen year-old son, only to discover he had created a separate identity which drew him into the dangerous international criminal underworld underlying London’s glittering surface. In the early morning of November 29th, 2019, surveillance cameras at the headquarters of MI6, Britain’s spy agency, captured a video of a young man pacing back and forth on a balcony of Riverwalk, a luxury building on the opposite bank of the Thames River. At 2:24 a.m., he jumped. In a quiet London neighborhood several miles away, Rachelle Brettler was worried. She hadn’t heard from her son Zac, who told her he had gone to stay with a friend for the night, but wasn’t answering his phone. Five days later, a police car pulled up in front of the house, and she knew she was about to hear the news every parent dreads: Her son was dead. In their unbearable grief, Rachelle and her husband Matthew tried to understand what had happened to Zac. He had his troubles, but in no way seemed suicidal. But his death was just the beginning of the shocks: The man who owned the apartment in Riverwalk, a wealthy businessman named Akbar Shamji, told them he knew Zac by a different identity: Zac Ismailov, the child of a wealthy Russian oligarch, whose widowed mother was living in Dubai and freezing him out of his inheritance. Then they learned that the apartment was occupied by a notorious gangster known as “Indian Dave” in London criminal circles. Indian Dave had been implicated in a gangland slaying and fled the country, but for opaque reasons came back to England and was never prosecuted. From the physical evidence and recovered text messages between Shamji and Sharma, it appeared something very different than a suicide had taken place in Riverwalk that night. But to the immense frustration of the Brettlers, Scotland Yard seemed to have no interest in investigating. In a bravura piece of reporting and writing, Patrick Radden Keefe delves into a story that peels back multiple layers of mystery, and exposes the seedy truths beneath the glamourous London of posh mansions and private night clubs, a world sustained and abetted by fundamental corruption. Zac Brettler was not the only person in the tale spinning lies. London Falling is a mesmerizing investigation of an inexplicable death, fueled by multiple turns and revelations, but at its heart it is a deeply empathetic portrait of a family trying to understand not just why their son died, but who he was”– Provided by publisher.

Dec 16, 2026
Whitney Tilson
The Art of Playing Defense, lessons from my mayoral run, and my favorite stocks

July 28, 2026 /

Get ready for a broad ranging and provocative talk by a notable Wall Street veteran. Whitney Tilson’s career has been focused on managing risks with investments. His book, The Art of Playing Defense is meant to be a practical and actionable guide filled with common-sense ideas for avoiding calamities, such as marrying the wrong person or having a good marriage go bad, getting thrown in jail, going bankrupt, or suffering a debilitating illness or injury.

Whitney says, “I’ve managed to avoid these disastrous outcomes – and hope I can help you do so as well! It’s no fun thinking about all the things that can go wrong in life, but if you want to get ahead, you have to start by not falling behind.”

As a successful investor, we asked Mr. Tilson to share with us his approach which has helped him and others avoid the major market downturns of the 21st Century. We are also curious about his “Twelve Questions to Ask before Marrying Someone” and how his 25-year-old daughter received his advice. With our proximity to NYC, we also couldn’t pass up the opportunity to hear from him about his recent run for the Democratic nomination for mayor in 2025.

Referred to the DMA by Mark Nunan

Whitney Tilson

Whitney Tilson is Editor of Stansberry Research, which provides advice, commentary and in-depth research and analysis to help people become better investors. The business has more than 100,000 paid subscribers. Mr. Tilson founded and, for nearly two decades, ran Kase Capital Management, which managed three value-oriented hedge funds and two mutual funds, with assets that peaked at over $200 million.

Mr. Tilson published his fourth book in 2021, The Art of Playing Defense: How to Get Ahead by Not Falling Behind. He has also co-authored two books, The Art of Value Investing: How the World’s Best Investors Beat the Market (2013) and More Mortgage Meltdown: 6 Ways to Profit in These Bad Times (2009), and was a contributor to Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger (2005), the definitive book on Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger. In addition, he has written for Forbes, the Financial Times, Kiplinger’s, the Motley Fool and TheStreet.com.

He has appeared dozens of times on CNBC, Bloomberg TV and Fox Business Network, was on the cover of the July 2007 Kiplinger’s, has been profiled by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and has spoken widely on value investing.

Prior to launching his investment career in 1999, Mr. Tilson spent five years working with Harvard Business School Professor Michael E. Porter studying the competitiveness of inner cities and inner-city-based companies nationwide. He and Professor Porter founded the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, of which Mr. Tilson was Executive Director. Mr. Tilson also led the effort to create ICV Partners, a national for-profit private equity fund focused on minority-owned and inner-city businesses that has raised nearly $500 million.

Mr. Tilson received an MBA with High Distinction from the Harvard Business School, where he was elected a Baker Scholar (top 5% of class), and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College.

Mr. Tilson is an avid mountaineer – he climbed the Nose of El Capitan in June 2020 and has summited Mt. Kilimanjaro, Mt. Blanc, the Matterhorn and the Eiger. He also regularly competes in obstacle course races, including the world championships pro division. He has run seven 24-hour World’s Toughest Mudders, winning the 50+ age group twice and setting the all-time age-group record of 75 miles in 2016.

Mr. Tilson spent much of his childhood in Tanzania and Nicaragua (his parents are both educators, were among the first couples to meet and marry in the Peace Corps, and have retired in Kenya). Consequently, Mr. Tilson is involved with a number of charities focused on Ukraine (to which he has traveled four times since the invasion and raised more than $18 million), education reform and Africa. Most recently, he was a candidate in the 2025 Democratic primary for Mayor of New York City.

Mr. Tilson lives in Manhattan with his wife of 32 years, with whom he has three adult daughters

Dec 2, 2026
Greg Steinmetz
The President and the Oligarch: Roosevelt, Mellon and the Triumph of Big Government

July 28, 2026 /

Why did one of our greatest presidents (FDR) ruthlessly persecute one of the richest men in America (Andrew Mellon)?

By any measure, Franklin D. Roosevelt is one our most admired presidents. But behind the beaming smile and folksy fireside chats was a ruthless politician willing to use the massive powers of the federal government to crush his enemies. In this thrilling exposé, Greg Steinmetz recounts how FDR targeted America’s third-richest man to prove his progressive credentials and rally support for his sweeping social agenda.

He found his scapegoat in former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. Mellon’s name dripped riches. More than any other, it symbolized the Roaring Twenties economic boom and the crack up that followed. FDR publicly blamed Mellon for the Great Depression, using him as a convenient diversion from the New Deal’s failure to bring jobs back to a devastated economy.

Roosevelt tortured the aging, frail and reclusive Mellon, cooking up a fake criminal charge in a bid to put him behind bars. When that fizzled, Roosevelt kept up the fight by making Mellon miserable in tax court. Mellon died before the verdict but not until, one final, jaw dropping twist occurred in this strange clash of titans.

This shocking book reveals the secret sinister side of Roosevelt—and explains how big government won out of over the libertarian economic order that had reigned since the birth of the republic.

There will be a book signing after the talk with a Barrett’s Bookstore representative on-site at the entryway table.

Greg Steinmetz Biography

Greg Steinmetz is an American journalist, retired securities analyst and author. He previously worked for The Wall Street Journal, where he covered investment banking before becoming Berlin Bureau Chief and then London Bureau Chief. His first book, The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: The Life and Times of Jacob Fugger, was heralded by Andrew Ross Sorkin as one of the best reads of 2015. The Wall Street Journal and Jim Cramer named his second book, American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street’s Biggest Fortune, as a top book of 2025.

Steinmetz was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated from Colgate University in 1983 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and German, and earned a master’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

Steinmetz spent 15 years working as a journalist for the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, Newsday, and The Wall Street Journal. He served as the Bureau Chief for The Wall Street Journal in Berlin and London. In 2023, he retired from a New York money management firm where he was a partner and a member of the board of a mutual fund.

His third book, The President and the Plutocrat: Roosevelt, Mellon and the Triumph of Big Government, has been just published in the fall of 2026.

 

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Nov 18, 2026
Michael Joseloff
The Greatest Scientific Gamble: A Story of Impossible Odds, Rival Scientists, and the Atomic Bomb

July 28, 2026 /

After a devastating run of German victories, Allied troops are beginning to halt Hitler’s advance. But far from the battlefields, Allied scientists are struggling. Intelligence reports put them a distant second behind the Germans in a competition that could determine the outcome of the war: the race to build the world’s first nuclear weapon.

During World War II, a group of physicists who had once been close friends found themselves on opposite sides of a deadly race. German scientist Werner Heisenberg and American physicists Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Sam Goudsmit were all leading figures in nuclear research. But after the attack on Pearl Harbor, their shared passion for science turned into a high-stakes competition to build the world’s first atomic bomb—a weapon that could determine the outcome of the war.

Heisenberg had a two-year head start, and the possibility that Nazi Germany might beat the Allies to the bomb terrified American scientists. The Manhattan Project, led by U.S. Army General Leslie Groves, became a massive effort to catch up. Fear of Heisenberg haunted Manhattan Project scientists. At one point, Groves even approved plans to bomb Heisenberg’s lab and assassinate him to stop Germany’s progress. Meanwhile, Sam Goudsmit led a secret military unit tasked with tracking down Heisenberg and uncovering the truth about the Nazi nuclear program. What they found would surprise everyone. The Greatest Scientific Gamble tells the dramatic and little-known story of how personal relationships, wartime fear, and scientific ambition collided in the race to unlock the power of the atom.

There will be a book signing after the talk signing with a Barrett’s Bookstore representative on-site at the entryway table.

Michael Joseloff

Michael Joseloff is a TV news and documentary producer living in New York City and winner of four Emmy awards. His work has aired on ABC, CBS, PBS and numerous cable TV networks.

He is author of The Greatest Scientific Gamble (Michigan State University Press) and Chasing Heisenberg: The Race for the Atom Bomb (Amazon Publishing).

He has produced programs for the acclaimed PBS series FRONTLINE as well as a business-related documentary, crime dramas, biographies and reality-based programs for cable tv.  Before that he produced hundreds of reports for The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour on PBS about current events, history, science and more.

 

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