A new book by Will Schwalbe, author of the 2012 bestseller The End of Your Life Book Club, focuses on his longstanding friendship with Berwyn native and Haverford School graduate Chris Maxey, writes Gavin Newsham for the New York Post. 

We Should Not Be Friends: The Story of a Friendship recalls the pair’s first meeting as part of a secret Yale society in 1983 which aimed to bring together a group of the most different kids they could find. 

Schwalbe was a bookworm who volunteered for Gay Men’s Health Crisis while Maxey was a star wrestler who wanted to become an elite Navy SEAL after graduating. 

The author was not impressed with what he saw. 

“Maxey was the loudest among us,” he wrote. “He took up space and knocked things over, and he was drinking vast quantities of beer.” 

However, it was beer that ended up being the connecting force between the pair, who started warming up to each other until they became good friends. 

In the decades after Yale, the pair often drifted apart but always found their way back to each other, especially when they were going through hard periods, like Maxey battling a brain tumor. 

Read more about the lifelong friendship in the New York Post. 

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Maxey now runs The Island School.