By the time Will Schwalbe was a junior at college, he had already met everyone he cared to know. He also knew exactly whom he wanted to avoid: the jocks. The jocks wore backwards baseball caps and moved in packs, filling boisterous tables in the dining hall, and on the whole seemed to Will another species, one he might encounter only at his own peril.

All this dramatically changed when he collided with Chris Maxey, known to just about everyone as Maxey. Maxey was physically imposing, loud, a star wrestler-and under the strangely liberating circumstances of a little-known secret society at Yale, the two forged a bond that has remained a mainstay of their lives for forty years and counting.

We Should Not be Friends tracks an extraordinary friendship over decades of challenge and change. Will Schwalbe's marvellous new work is a testament to the miracle of human connection and to all we have to gain when we let go of first impressions and see one another for who we truly are.