Haunted by the past, John Verra recounts his traumatic experience as an eighteen-year-old who witnessed and was partially involved in the murder of Chief Bates, a despised police chief known for his arrogance and bigotry, especially toward Sicilians. The murder, which took place near a gambling shack called Club Morocco in Breakheart, Massachusetts, remains unsolved and continues to overshadow John's life. Despite his partial confession to a priest friend, John has never fully revealed the...

John Boy and Roberto, descendants of immigrants from the same town in Italy, by chance find their lives interwoven as young adults in the Italian neighborhood in Boston, the North End. Their early years have little or no resemblance to one another's early life experiences.John Boy, a moniker given to him by his great-uncles, is surrounded by a huge loving family who will always have his back, and he knows it. Roberto, although he was born in America, returns with his Italian father...

ENGINEERING FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTAN AUTHORITATIVE AND COMPLETE GUIDE TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ENGINEERINGIn Engineering for Sustainable Development: Theory and Practice, a team of distinguished academics deliver a comprehensive, education-focused discussion on sustainable engineering, bridging the gap between theory and practice by drawing upon illuminating case studies and the latest cutting-edge research. In the book, rea...

These events took place during prohibition, World War II, and the time after the war was won, during the ’40s and ’50s. The immigrants and first- and second-generation Americans were closely loved family members who always had one another’s back while striving to reach their dreams of security and wealth.It’s a story of a young family member who experienced most of what happened, good and bad, in life at a young age. Each individual is based upon a person that lived, to a degree, m...

Do you know what night crawlers are? They make great bait for fishermen who are not squeamish about dirty hands.This story begins when two boys, age thirteen, decide to earn a little money selling worms to a bait shop and are once again together on the thirtieth anniversary of a life-changing discovery. Wakefield, their town and its people, are a part of who they are, especially for young Dolf, who has two important reasons for his trips from New York City to his boyhood home....

John Verra is a young man moving to a much bigger stage. He arrives with a love and belief in the founding principles of our country. He is not in Washington, DC, but living in another shinning city on a hill, or so he believes, Boston, Massachusetts, a town where he attended college and falls in love.As a member of the city council, a seat in Boston's governing body, attained because of the sacrifice of a new friend, he eventually realizes he is politically naive and inexperienced...

This Handbook emerges as a pivotal resource in underscoring the important role of sustainability education in catalysing a global shift toward sustainable development. It articulates the need for a profound transformation within institutional leadership and educational frameworks to support the critical global sustainability transition.This Handbook explores sustainability thinking as a critical paradigm shift in confronting the multifaceted challenges of sustainable development. I...

The untold stories of the women who have risen to prominence and notoriety in Italy's mafia—many more ruthless than the fathers and husbands they replaced—and the octogenarian murderer who decades ago blazed a bloody trail for them to follow.In 1955 in a public market outside Naples, Italy, a pregnant teenage widow named Assunta “Pupetta” Maresca encounters the man she believes to be her husband's killer. Minutes later, police find the man dead, riddled with an ast...

People from all walks of life are appalled and fascinated in equal measure by the stratospheric political career of the tycoon and three-time Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.Michael Day provides an in depth look at the life and crimes of the shameless media mogul until his nine lives ran out and he faced definitive conviction which signaled his irreversible decline. He tells the story of a bright and ambitious man from a lower-middle class family who shook off his humble or...

Growing up in an aristocratic family that seems almost to have stepped out of the pages of The Leopard, Leoluca Orlando entered law and politics in the late 1970s as one of the young idealists identified with the Catholic Church who were challenging the Mafia’s control of Sicilian life. At about the same moment, life in Sicily was becoming more perilous. As if the old” Mafia had not been bad enough, a new and particularly vicious Mafia sect based in the town of Corleone was murdering its ...

The idea for I SICILIANI came during Lou’s time in Tuscany where, working in land development, he gained the opportunity to know many Sicilians, and came to understand their background, passions and what motivates them. This work of fiction looks at Sicilian history, the founding of La Cosa Nostra, and the values that shape it. It explores how the tentacles of the Sicilian way reach north into Tuscan life. The book teems with the themes of intrigue, conspiracy, murder, religion, politics and ...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A fast-paced, fun read with echoes of something deeper. The author’s command of pop fiction delivers crisp, sharp prose.” —The Boston GlobeIn his final hours in the Oval Office, the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six years hidden away in a federal prison. What no one knows is that the President issues the pardon...