"Author Peter Pero pays tribute to Italian-American heritage, but the focus is not on Columbus, Mother Cabrini, or Michaelangelo. Instead, he looks to the working men and women of Italian Chicago who have built our city, brick-by-brick. They funded our churches, built Chicago's skyline, and raised generations of children from immigrant succession to ethnic success." At Little Italy on October 25.

Pero is the author of Chicago Italians At Work. From the publisher: "For more than a century, Italian immigrants and their descendants contributed their labor and talent to building the city. "Chicago Italians at Work focuses on a period from 1890 to 1970 when industry was king in this midwestern metropolis.