Geno and Vinnie were born on the banks of the Urubamba River between Cusco and Machu Picchu, Peru. This area is known as the Sacred Valley. Geno and Vinnie came to be from different parents, but they became inseparable after birth. They made a promise to travel together to the shores of the U.S. of A. Little did they know that their mothers had made a deal with the owner of the Alejandro Alpaca Ranch to send their children to the land of the free. The adventures that follow are the travels and experiences of Geno and Vinnie and their search for freedom in America. Their story is perfect as Alpacas are great story tellers. Phil Roberts is an entrepreneur, creative writer, gardener, dog lover and friend of Geno & Vinnie. Having lived in the countryside for 42 years, he loves to gaze at the stars on a warm summer's night. Geno and Vinnie came to share the Country Escape seven years ago and have added to the ambiance of the property's' unique setting. It was Geno and Vinnie that inspired the writing of the Freedom Series books as an expression of the joy that they experienced as they were allowed to run untethered on the property. Freedom is a unique and valuable right to both cherish and embrace as individuals of society. The interactions with animals and their uniqueness with self is a joy to be experienced like no other. Mr. Roberts' vision is to share this through his writings of children's books.

Legacies; an American Journey, recounts the history of one family of Italian-American soldiers and policemen, and their long battle against the Mafia, Fascism and Communism. It details their sacrifices, triumphs and losses. This book recounts their flight to America to escape the Mafia’s and Mussolini’s vengeance, and their military service in the American army during World War II and Vietnam.

Even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States began to prepare to enter World War II. When the army decided to build a depot in Seneca County in 1941, dozens of families were given only days to vacate the homes they loved and land they had farmed for generations. The depot provided vital jobs for residents, but it also continued to cause controversy even after it was established--all while providing critical support for the army through the Persian Gulf War. Since the base closed in 2000, the community has grappled with what to do with the property, including protecting the area population of white deer. Join local historians Carolyn Zogg and Walter Gable as they tell the story of the Seneca Army Depot and the lives it has affected.

FROM BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE GODFATHER - "A classic... The novel is lifted into literature by its highly charged language, its penetrating insights, and its mixture of tenderness and rage." - New York Times Book Review Described by the author as his "best and most literary book." Puzo's classic story about the loves, crimes and struggles confronted by one family of New York City immigrants living in Hell's Kitchen. Fresh from the farms in Italy, Lucia Santa struggles to hold her family together in a strange land. At turns poignant, comic and violent, The Fortunate Pilgrim is Italian-American fiction at its very best. The book's hero, Lucia Santa, is an incredibly captivating character and based on Puzo's very own mother - he describes, "her wisdom, her ruthlessness, and her unconquerable love for her family and for life itself, qualities not valued in women at the time."

This volume collects papers put together by an interdisciplinary group of scholars, which explore how the two imaginary geo-cultural spaces «Central Europe» and «(North) America» have mutually attributed meanings to each other over the past two centuries, how traveling images of an «othered» cultural space - inserted into specific regional, national and social contexts and appropriated for negotiations of cultural identity and belonging as well as exclusion and colonization - have laid the basis for a cultural essentialism which thinks culture through space and negotiates cultural status through de-historicized notions of place and territory. It particularly focuses on processes of motion and travel which helped to create these images and discusses in individual case studies a wide variety of cultural phenomena - ranging from music to film, from tourism to world fairs - while sharing the common concern to explore how motion through space - whether physical or imaginary - helped shape, crystallize and negotiate images of the cultural other in contact or transit zones where people, images and cultures meet in asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination, and where tourists, exiles, travelers, displaced commodities and foreign cultural practices generate powerful, as well as potentially subversive, visions and imaginings. Thus this volume invites to find individual paths and ports in/between the subjects presented and in a way to contribute to, to follow up the web of exchange represented by its authors, themselves a (mostly) virtual community of researchers.

This book is divided into three sections. The first section deals with the general situation of Italian/American literature and its reception both in the United States and in Italy. It also discusses other social and cultural issues that pertain to Italian Americana. Section two consists of six chapters, each discussing a specific author; three dedicated to prose (Pietro di Donato, Mario Puzo, Luigi Barzini), three dedicated to poetry (Joseph Tusiani, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Rina Ferrarelli). Section three examines the current state of criticism dedicated to Italian/American literature, the second part focusing in on a number of specific works.

One a Sicilian Hell's Kitchen gang leader, the other a sickly but brilliant Orthodox Jewish boy who lives next door, Vinny Vesta and Sidney Butcher meet on a fire escape during the blistering New York City summer of 1950. Their friendship develops over the course of a summer that will change Vinny's fortunes forever, at a cost he could never have imagined. Based on a true story, Mafia Summer brilliantly captures a pivotal moment in Mafia history and in the lives of the teenagers caught up by the Mob. "Influenced more by Billy Bathgate than by The Godfather...Sweet, affectionate, and bloody: a glance backward to a well-spent youth."-Kirkus Reviews "E. Duke Vincent hits the target dead center with this first novel set on the bloody streets of Hell's Kitchen. A mini-epic, complete with a full-scale crime war, Mafia Summer remains a detailed tale of friendship and of the best kind of loyalty. A masterful performance."-Lorenzo Carcaterra, author of Sleepers and Paradise City "One of the best books on the mafia I have ever read. Right up there with The Godfather."-New York Times bestselling author Jack Higgins

Robert B. Parker introduces readers to police chief Jesse Stone in the first novel in the beloved mystery series—a New York Times bestseller. After a busted marriage kicks his drinking problem into overdrive and the LAPD unceremoniously dumps him, thirty-five-year-old Jesse Stone’s future looks bleak. So he’s shocked when a small Massachusetts town called Paradise recruits him as police chief. He can’t help wondering if this job is a genuine chance to start over, the kind of offer he can’t refuse. Once on board, Jesse doesn’t have to look for trouble in Paradise: it comes to him. For what is on the surface a quiet New England community quickly proves to be a crucible of political and moral corruption—replete with triple homicide, tight Boston mob ties, flamboyantly errant spouses, maddened militiamen and a psychopath-about-town who has fixed his violent sights on the new lawman. Against all this, Jesse stands utterly alone, with no one to trust—even he and the woman he’s seeing are like ships passing in the night. He finds he must test his mettle and powers of command to emerge a local hero—or the deadest of dupes.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Robert B. Parker introduces readers to police chief Jesse Stone in the first novel in the beloved mystery series—a New York Times bestseller. After a busted marriage kicks his drinking problem into overdrive and the LAPD unceremoniously dumps him, thirty-five-year-old Jesse Stone’s future looks bleak. So he’s shocked when a small Massachusetts town called Paradise recruits him as police chief. He can’t help wondering if this job is a genuine chance to start over, the kind of offer he can’t refuse. Once on board, Jesse doesn’t have to look for trouble in Paradise: it comes to him. For what is on the surface a quiet New England community quickly proves to be a crucible of political and moral corruption—replete with triple homicide, tight Boston mob ties, flamboyantly errant spouses, maddened militiamen and a psychopath-about-town who has fixed his violent sights on the new lawman. Against all this, Jesse stands utterly alone, with no one to trust—even he and the woman he’s seeing are like ships passing in the night. He finds he must test his mettle and powers of command to emerge a local hero—or the deadest of dupes.