Adolescence can be shocking and painful both to experience and, as a parent, to observe. Addressing the isolation, fear, and silence that parents endure at this developmental stage, authors Michael Riera and Joseph Di Prisco go beyond the stereotypes and expertly guide parents to a better appreciation of what they are seeing--and perhaps missing--in their teenager's frustrating if not completely troubling behavior. Through stories and conversations, Field Guide to the American Teenager dramatizes teens living their lives on their own terms and illuminates for bewildered and sometimes beleaguered parents the "extraordinary-in-the-ordinary" reality of everyday teenage life. Complete with original suggestions for how to improve parent-child communication, Field Guide lets parents stand briefly in their teenager's shoes, ultimately guiding families toward genuine mutual respect and understanding.

Field Guide to the American Teenager: A Parent's Companion

Politics & Social Sciences

Di Prisco, Joseph

Diprisco, Joseph

Riera, Michael

Social Sciences

Da Capo Lifelong Books

Brother Eli is a mountain of a man, bald of his free will, in the thrall of a gargantuan appetite. His robe is stained, his classes are demanding, his attitude cynical, his breath sour. He smokes, drinks, fights against the forces of darkness - parents and school administrators. he does not lack opponents in the Church, his family, the student body, or his order - Most Holy Family. Now, even that war in Viet Nam is coming close to home and school. 
Enter two semi-mysterious strangers to Catholic Prep. One is a novice who is hysterically embraced by students and Brothers alike. Transfer student Nadette Nevers is shunned and reviled by classmates, but esteemed by Brother Eli for her eccentricity and independence. Along with a menagerie of quirky characters, Brother Eli journeys through matters of faith, truths, lies, money, envy and power, sexuality and food.

Confessions of Brother Eli

Literature & Fiction

Di Prisco, Joseph/ Diprisco, Joseph

Literary

MACADAM/CAGE.

The Fitzgeralds are buttressed by wealth and privilege, but they are also buffeted by crisis after crisis, many of their own creation. Even so, they live large, in love and in strife, wielding power, combating adversaries and each other. The Good Family Fitzgerald is a saga of money and ambition, crime and the Catholic Church, a sprawling, passionate story shaped against a background of social discord. Padraic Fitzgerald is the up-from-nothing, aging patriarch whose considerable business interests appear anything but legitimate, but he has bigger problems than law enforcement. A widower, Paddy becomes enmeshed with a young woman who will force him to re-examine his cardinal assumptions. Meanwhile, he has cultivated thorny relationships with his four children, all of whom struggle over the terms of connection with their father. Anthony―oldest son, principled criminal defense attorney, designated prince of the family―and his cherished Francesca are devastated by tragedy. In the aftermath, Frankie comes to play a vital role in Fitzgerald lore. Philip is a charismatic Catholic priest spectacularly torn between his lofty ideals and aspirations and his all-too-human flaws and longings. Matty has wandered aimlessly, but once he finds his purpose, he precipitates turmoil in all quarters. Colleen, the youngest, is a seeker who styles herself the outsider and the conscience of the clan. Her hands are full, as no Fitzgerald is left untested or unscathed, and by the end the whole family, as well as those venturing into their realm, will be stunned into illumination.

The Good Family Fitzgerald

United States

Rare Bird Books

My Last Resume: New and Collected Poems showcases an exquisite body of poetry spanning more than five decades. While Joseph Di Prisco, a true Renaissance man, has achieved success across genres, his lifetime of work showcased in the long-awaited My Last Resume is proof that, for Joe, it's always been poetry.

My Last Resume: New & Collected Poems (1971–1980 | 1999–2023)

Poetry

Sun City is a tale of professional blackjack players and counters, set largely in Las Vegas and South Africa. The first strand of the story zeroes in on Dolly Leone, a gambler of unmatched proportions who is close to skipping town due to unpaid monies to his bookmaker. As luck would have it, at this moment, Dolly uncovers the manuscripts of Valentino Comfort, a member of Dolly's old gambling circle—a team that made irreversible waves in worldwide casinos in the 1980’s. Under mounting pressure, Dolly gets the bright idea to patch together Val's philosophical and other scribblings into a presentable piece of work, hopefully to bring monetary profit into Dolly's hands. Di Prisco brings to life a cast of eccentrics, including Dolly the gambler and scammer who might be a killer, Pasquale the big–money backer, Valentino Comfort (a.k.a. the Schoolboy), a philosophy minor, and Tess, sometimes called the Teaser.

Sun City: A Novel

Short Stories & Anthologies

MacMurray & Beck

In 1961, the Di Priscos fled Brooklynand the FBI. The father was a gambler and bookmaker, and agents chased him into the Long Island woods because he was implicated in police corruption. At thirty-five he escaped to a strange place called California, where his wife and two of her four sons joined him. One member of the family graduated high school, and he would make books of a different sort. Joe didn’t seem called to a life of crime, but evidence is mixed. Once he was Brother Joseph in a Catholic novitiate, but later he was named prime suspect in a racketeering investigation. During Vietnam he seized his college administration building, and then played blackjack around the world, staked by big-money backers. He managed Italian restaurants with laughable ineptitude, but also did graduate study and taught for twenty years. Eventually Joe buries his unstable, manipulative, and beautiful mother and his brothers, including his heroin-addicted younger brother. Later, he cares for his father with Alzheimer’s. By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Subway to California recounts Joe’s battles with personal demons, bargains struck with angels, and truces with family in this richly colorful tale that reads like great fiction.

Subway to California

Biographies & Memoirs

Memoirs

Rare Bird Books, A Vireo Book

All For Now: A Novel

Humor & Satire

Joseph Di Prisco’s anticipated memoir brings the hustler, gambler, criminal, bookmaker, and confidential informer―Joe’s father―back to life, and reveals the fascinating and unsettling truths that simultaneously bound and separated father and son. On the street they called him Pope, and he made his bones in Brooklyn during the ’50s and ’60s when Joe was a kid and had more questions about his dad than he would dare ask. Later, when Di Prisco accidentally discovered fifty-year-old transcripts of New York State Appellate Division trials, where his dad was the star witness against corrupt NYPD cops―cops with whom he collaborated―Pope’s hazardous, veiled, twisted past was finally illuminated. The Pope of Brooklyn is both sequel and prequel to his much-praised memoir, Subway to California. Enlightened by these disclosures, Di Prisco flawlessly traces how secrets once revealed led to even deeper mysteries both for himself and for the reader.

The Pope of Brooklyn

Professionals & Academics

Sightlines from the Cheap Seats is the latest book of extraordinary poetry by prize-winning poet Joseph Di Prisco. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Carl Dennis has praised Di Prisco’s “strong and original voice.” Dean Young, Pulitzer Prize finalist, wrote that “addressing unquenchable longing and the shadows of death and failure, the lyric engines of [his] poems propel us with vital combustions”; his work “is proof of the presence of a large, funny, and indefatigable spirit.”

Sightlines from the Cheap Seats: Poems

True Crime

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Books by Di Prisco, Joseph