We showcase critically acclaimed books, "Dinner with DiMaggio" and "Street Smart: the Primer for Success in the New World," featured in the "New York Times" and other publications. We are currently developing other projects, featuring realistic plots, real people, and substantial issues, deftly handled.

Dinner with Dimaggio shows how Joe Di was so loved, even by the mafia and celebrities...As he said to one [hardened mobster] Tony X, "You may talk to me standing up. You can't break bread with me. I don't break bread with...Joe couldn't find the right word, such as plumbing contractor, electrician, or olive-oil importer to substitute for mobster to avoid being stuffed in the back of a Cadillac sedan trunk found floating in Jamaica Bay."

Celebs such as Tom Hanks really loved Joe, and sometimes Joe loved them just as much.

" We were having dinner at Coco Pazzo when Joe spotted Tom Hanks at a table with his wife, Rita Wilson, Penny Marshall, Rosie O'Donnell, and a number of other guests. Joe told [Rock] how he had liked [Tom] Hanks in his role as the field manager Jimmy Dugan in [the movie] A League of Their Own...There at one table sat many of the people who made the film he enjoyed so much. Joe went to the table on his own. Hanks looked as if he was going to fall off his chair. Stunned, he offered Joe one of his chocolate chip cookies, which Joe accepted without hesitation. [Rock] heard Tom Hanks say, "I can't believe I am sharing my chocolate chip cookies with Joe Dimaggio."

Cuban leader Fidel Castro was a fan of Joe Dimaggio. The owner of the Daily News, Mort Zuckerman, asked Dr Rock if Joe would sign a baseball for him. "Mort must have thought I needed to be persuaded, because he went on to explain the Cuban leader's admiration for the Yankee Clipper. Castro was a crazy baseball fan and a Yankee fan. Cubans loved the Yankees, because Yankee games aired on radio in Cuba live from the Bronx during the '40s. Even the most primitive Cuban fishermen's village got live Yankee action. Remember The Old Man and the Sea? Hemingway knew all about it. Cubans were as familiar with Joe Dimaggio as the average American....Not only was Fidel Castro a fan of baseball, but he was once a decent baseball prospect himself. Castro...was spotted by Pirates scouts and others...Fidel was almost seduced into playing ball professionally in the United States, but the offer wasn't high enough for him to make the move. [Rock] was concerned about asking Joe to sign a ball for Castro. After all, Joe lived in Florida, which had a large Cuban emigre population, who were vehemently anti-Castro. Many Cubans suffered under Castro, and some had been forced to flee...Being associated with Castro in anyway might not be good for Joe in Florida. I had mixed feelings about it myself...I was raised to think about Commies were the enemy....

         "Joe, can I ask you a question?"
"Sure, Doc."

"If I asked you to sign a baseball for Fidel Castro, what would you say?"

"Doc, I'd do it."

"You're kidding me, Joe! You'd give that Commie bastard a baseball, a signed Joe Dimaggio baseball?"
"Doc, it has nothing to do with his political beliefs. It has to do with the fact that the guy is a huge baseball fan and, from what I have understand, he was an excellent fielder and pitcher."
"It took a week for Joe to sign the ball, because he wanted to choose his words carefully. He didn't want the message to be construed as an endorsement of Castro's political beliefs. Joe finally signed the ball, and I delivered it to Mort Zuckerman...[Joe said:]

"Signing a baseball for Castro could improve relations between the US and Cuba."
"Joe had signed the baseball to reflect his intention: 'To Fidel, your friend in sports,...Joe Dimaggio.'

Dr Anthony Fauci, Bo Dietl, Bob Costas, Governor Mike Huckabee, Vladmir Pozner, Ken Auletta, Richard Johnson, Charlie Rose, Judge Judy,  Anthony DeCurtis, Anthony Scaramucci, Raymond McGuire Burns, Bonnie Fuller, Ken Sunshine, Steve Aiello, Jerry Della Femina, Judith Rodin, Michael Imperioli, Tony Lobianco, Arianna Huffingto, Maria Bartiromo, Tony James, Rep. Peter King, Joe Piscopo, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Fern Mallis, Governor David Paterson,got there by being street smart! They're all in "Street Smart: The Primer for Success in the New World".

And respected thinkers such as Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Ernest Hemingway have their wisdom offered in Street Smart. "Work smart, not just hard. Only work smart at what you can win." Such old but wise wisdom in the start of Street Smart, mentioned prior to the street smart memoirs of many a successful person offering wisdom in this book.

Having Street Smart is a form of extrasensory perception, also known as ESP, and everyone has it, some way or another.

We learned about street smart because we lived in a working-class community in Brooklyn, NY...."Thankfully, we were not 'fortunate' to have grown up in a privileged...neighborhood or household. We had a very untraditional way of learning in Brooklyn that was nowhere near the Ivy League...We received an education that can't be replicated anywhere else."

"New York is the Petri dish of ideas in politics, music, the arts, medicine, and even crime. That follows from the premises here that NY 'outer borough life' brings an innate need for being Street Smart." If you survive and stay out of trouble, with help from street smart...you emerge better off than you would have had you never needed street smart.

"Practically every one of our Street Scholars stresses that using their own version of being Street Smart helped them overcome their social and economic disadvantages, becoming successful enough for us to want to include them in this book."

"Ernest Hemingway said that war was the province of chance. The generals and military thought confirm the writer's thoughts. But chance is hardly blind. Generals and admirals know this better than anyone, matched possibly by entertainers and some businesspeople. Of course, the military calls this opportunism, which is not a dirty word to them...Leading examples of this...[Patton, Zhukov, and Sherman]."

General Patton, who led the American army during world war two, "Street Smarted the entire war. It was reported in recent histories that his campaign in Sicily relied on information reported to him by the Sicilian Mafia." Patton did not have an easy life- he had dyslexia, and yet in spite of this he had a successful career. This can be attributed to his street smarts.

Another world war two general on the side of the Allies, Georgy Zhukov, believed "war and luck must be bent to your will"....[and] insisted on spotted, seizing, and exploiting lucky breaks, even when his superiors yelled at him otherwise."

The American Civil War general, William Tecumseh Sherman, believed you "pick your fights carefully and attack the enemy as a nation, not just its soldiers...why attack the soldiers when we can attack the support systems of the rebel armies...their farms, factories, ports, livestock...Sherman went on a great and damaging rampage, with an army, through the civilized South."

Joe Dimaggio knew more than just baseball...he knew how to play the stock market. He told Dr Rock: "Do like I do and stick with really stable stocks." He was the biggest stand up guy of them all- he was there for Frank Sinatra of Rat Pack fame: "Only one guy stood up for my good friend Frank Sinatra. Me."

And the late, great actress Marilyn Monroe was someone who Joe knew intimately...they dated for a while and were married. Upon seeing a billboard in NYC with her featured as wearing a pair of tight jeans, he said to Dr Rock: "They have got Marilyn up there wearing those tight jeans, but I've got to tell you she looked a helluva lot better with the jeans off than she did with the jeans on."

Joe Dimaggio wanted Peter Rose admitted to the baseball Hall of Fame: "Doc [Positano] if moral character was a prerequisite of admission to the Hall of Fame a lot worse people have been admitted."

Ted Williams, a famous baseball player in his own right, with the Red Sox, was a rival but a World War two veteran Joe respected.

The legendary boxer Muhammad Ali was one of Joe's sports heroes. As quoted in Dinner with Dimaggio, "We had a major disagreement when I criticized Muhammad Ali for being, in my eyes, a draft dodger. I was touchy about the subject, because we lost our cousin Michael Sessa Jr. during his second tour of duty in Vietnam. They brought what was left of his body back to Brooklyn in a canvas bag. His sacrifice had affected his family deeply. After I stated my opinion, Joe turned pensive. He told me that Ali was a hero and he admired him. When [Rock] objected, Joe explained his position. 'Doc, you're not supposed to be judging the guy in that arena. You're supposed to look at him as a fighter, an athlete. It is not right to look at him as a citizen...I may not have agreed with what he did, because I am a veteran myself, but Muhammad Ali is an athlete. He's one of the greatest ever. In fact, he was as good as me...People could have said the same thing about me. I served for three years at the peak of my career during World War Two, but I didn't fight...I never had a missile fired over my head or a bullet whizzing past my ear. I went around the world doing exhibition for the troops."