All Posts

New year. New dudes. Over 25 men attended our 2026 Last Call Library kick-off at Union Hall last Thursday! Guys from across Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens — s ome longtime New Yorkers, some new to the city. A few fresh arrivals from elsewhere in the U.S. and abroad (apparently word got out to the British expatriates). Ages ranged from the mid-20s to late-30s, with backgrounds spanning media, law, tech, finance, nonprofit, and more. As a former CUNY staffer, meetin

“If only the sandals and the pistachio-coloured shirts could be put in a pile and burnt, and every vegetarian, teetotaller and creeping Jesus sent home to Welwyn Garden City to do his yoga exercises quietly!” - George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier I honestly wasn’t familiar with Orwell’s nonfiction work until my brother offhandedly mentioned The Road to Wigan Pier . “Yeah, man, Wigan Pier  is a good book,” he said. “What’s it about?” I asked. “A lot of things…” he responded,

"Thirst is deadlier than hunger. Deprived of food, you might survive for a few weeks, but deprived of liquid refreshment, you would be lucky to last more than a few days. Only breathing matters more.” - Tom Standage, A History of the World in 6 Glasses I read A History of the World in 6 Glasses  roughly a year before we launched Last Call Library. It unpacks world history through the lens of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and Coca-Cola. I was immediately hooked and simply

"You can have systems that do every possible thing policymakers can think of to ensure 'program integrity' (in other words, making sure no one is getting a dollar more than they should) or you can have systems that scale. You can't have both" - Jennifer Pahlka, Recoding America: Why Government is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better In early 2025, I stumbled upon Recoding America  in my neighborhood’s free book box around the same time the U.S. Department of Go