Jacopo della Quercia

Giacomo Calabria grew up watching movies like Back to the Future, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Indian Jones and The Last Crusade, and listening to his parents tell bedtime stories about Genghis Kahn. Maybe that explains a little about how this Albany resident approaches history.

Under the pseudonym Jacopo Della Quercia, Calabria has been a frequent contributor on fun and fascinating bits of history at the humor website Cracked. He came to Albany a few years ago to be closer to family (his brother and sister-in-law own the popular Lark Street bakery Crisan) and started work on his first novel -- the newly released Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy -- "an equal-parts cocktail of action, adventure, science-fiction and comedy" that brings together William Howard Taft, Robert Todd Lincoln and other historical figures to solve a mystery that stretches back to the Lincoln assassination.