A significant part of Troy's history, and that of its neighborhood, is the immigration of diverse ethnic groups. By 1900, the US Census reported 465 Italian-born residents in Troy, and in 1930, there were 2,000 Italian immigrants. From 1900 to the 1950s, Little Italy, bordering the central business district from Ferry Street to the Poestenkill and from Fourth Street to Prospect Park, was predominately an Italian or Italian American neighborhood. Among the close-knit families of Troy's Little Italy were import stores, 60 mom-and-pop shops, churches, schools, a community center, and a veterans' post, all of which were found within a 20-block radius. America's Little Italy neighborhoods became centers of ethnic culture and heritage. In the 1960s, urban renewal challenged Troy and other cities with mixed results. Today, there is resurgence in Troy, with plans to expand the city's central historic district to include most of Little Italy. In the meantime, empty nesters, artists, and young professionals are moving into the neighborhood as valuable community partners continue to support the efforts of the neighborhood group Troy Little Italy.

The entire Italian American experience—from America's earliest days through the present—is now available in a single volume. This wide-ranging work relates the entire saga of the Italian-American experience from immigration through assimilation to achievement. The book highlights the enormous contributions that Italian Americans—the fourth largest European ethnic group in the United States—have made to the professions, politics, academy, arts, and popular culture of America. Going beyond familiar names and stories, it also captures the essence of everyday life for Italian Americans as they established communities and interacted with other ethnic groups. In this single volume, readers will be able to explore why Italians came to America, where they settled, and how their distinctive identity was formed. A diverse array of entries that highlight the breadth of this experience, as well as the multitude of ways in which Italian Americans have influenced U.S. history and culture, are presented in five thematic sections. Featured primary documents range from a 1493 letter from Christopher Columbus announcing his discovery to excerpts from President Barack Obama's 2011 speech to the National Italian American Foundation. Readers will come away from this book with a broader understanding of and greater appreciation for Italian Americans' contributions to the United States.

A daring and timely feminist retelling of The Iliad from the perspective of the women of Troy who endured it—an extraordinary follow up to The Silence of the Girls from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Regeneration Trilogy and “one of contemporary literature’s most thoughtful and compelling writers" (The Washington Post). Troy has fallen and the victorious Greeks are eager to return home with the spoils of an endless war—including the women of Troy themselves. They await a fair wind for the Aegean. It does not come, because the gods are offended. The body of King Priam lies unburied and desecrated, and so the victors remain in suspension, camped in the shadows of the city they destroyed as the coalition that held them together begins to unravel. Old feuds resurface and new suspicions and rivalries begin to fester. Largely unnoticed by her captors, the one time Trojan queen Briseis, formerly Achilles's slave, now belonging to his companion Alcimus, quietly takes in these developments. She forges alliances when she can, with Priam's aged wife the defiant Hecuba and with the disgraced soothsayer Calchas, all the while shrewdly seeking her path to revenge.