Aug 21, 2026

A client of mine left $100 million to his wife and two grown kids after cancer took him at 66. He was Yale-educated, second-generation American, ran the family business his Russian immigrant father started, and worked 16-hour days, seven days a week, in the basement. His son, days away from becoming a father himself,...

Aug 6, 2026

After my daughter Hannah watched Queen's Gambit in January 2021, she said "Dad, let's play chess." With those fateful words, our lives shifted. Just over a year later, I could no longer beat my 16-year-old daughter. Neither could her 6'3 older brother Jonah.

I wrote this essay a few years ago. Hannah is off at...