Showing results by narrator "Anthony Valerio" in All Categories

Shel was a friend, collaborator, and confidante. This charming portrait of the great writer of children's books presents him in a fresh new humane light. What he was like as a man and a friend. What interested and inspired him. What he would do and not do. The women in his life. We worked in the Italian cafes of Greenwich Village. What did he feel was lacking in his legendary career as author of books, songs, and plays? Walk with us. See, listen, and enjoy a Shel Silverstein not only for kids.

Conversation with Johnny is very special to me, because it constitutes at least my own dual cultural nature, the writer and the individual of power, the local gangster, most of us experienced in the old neighborhoods. Here, they merge into one. Out of this duo comes, I hope, a kind of closure on the stereotype we also all know, that of the godfather myth. On an exalted plain above all of this, to my great pleasure, is the alluring, elusive woman.

The life of one of the great lovers of all time, John Dante lived the life of a bachelor's fantasy, going from his humble beginnings in a small Italian village to the Playboy Mansion, where he lived for 26 years with Hugh Hefner and 40 of the most beautiful women in the world. John Dante was a key figure in the first years of the Playboy empire, hiring Bunnies, training Bunny Mothers, and managing the Playboy jet. This might be a book about sex if not for Valerio’s ability to plumb John’s mind and reawaken him to Dante Alighieri’s system of sin and punishment.