In these poems, objects are occasions in outline. Dogs, cats, pianos, cappuccino, hair dye, snowshoes, parsley, and black raspberries do not simply lie there. They act upon one another and upon us. They demonstrate the laws of time. One birthday is a hundred birthdays. One city disappears into another.

Examines the forces that have shaped Italian American writing, from the novels of John Fante to the musings of Tony Soprano.

An experiment in what the author terms "speculative history," this novel tracks the movements of a man haunted by the spirit of his deceased mother and dogged by the notion that Astoria-the Italian neighborhood in Queens where his mother grew up in the 1920s-is the true capital of the world. In 1986, two years after his mother's death, the narrator travels from Paris to New York to Rome, unable to escape the shadow of Napoleon, the historical figure he now associates with his mother.

Provides an overview of the past, present, and future of Italian American culture.

As the real American gangsters of yesterday recede into the history books, their iconic figures loom larger than ever. From Wiseguys to Wise Men studies the cultural figure of the gangster, and explores its social function in the construction and projection of masculinity in the United States.