Books I’ve written…

Brooklyn Navy Yard: Beyond The Wall

Coming, April 2024

Published by LTV Press

Abandoned Industries of NY
(Volume 2)

“Abandoned Industries of New York City is a journey through the decaying ruins of the city’s forgotten past. Through clandestine photographs and in-depth research, Joseph Anastasio reveals the untold stories of New York City’s former industrial glory. The stories behind each location serves as deep-cut prequels and offshoots to well-known news events, including the disappearance of one of NYC’s most infamous mobsters, the discovery of a secret 9/11 memorial prototype, and the origin story of the man who saved the US auto industry.”

Published by Font Hill Media / Acadia Publishing

Abandoned Industries of NY
(Volume 1)

“…These chronicles range from the factory that seemed to keep its entire neighborhood employed, to the individual lives of those who were closely linked to these locations. These characters range from every imaginable background: from the widow of a Titanic victim who amassed a fortune from selling lifeboats, to the cosmetics entrepreneur whose empire slipped away.”

Published by Font Hill Media / Acadia Publishing

7 Line LIC

This book reveals the surprising secret histories of over two dozen buildings along the 7 train in Long Island City, NYC. Out of print, it will be superseded by City Stories NYC, 7 Line LIC Edition, coming in 2023.

Published by LTV Press, 2016

We Own The Night

“From early 2009 to mid-2010, the Underbelly Project was the world’s best-kept urban art secret. This is the only book documenting the project, during which the world’s leading urban artists, such as Swoon, Faile, Revok, and Lister, made late-night trips to an abandoned New York City subway station, painting night after night to transform the space into the largest underground art gallery in the world.”

For this book, I wrote a chapter on the project in relation to NYC urban exploration and graffiti culture.

Published by Rizzoli, 2012

New York Calling: Blackout to Bloomberg

Edited by Marshall Berman and Brian Berger

From Publishers Weekly: “Berman (On the Town: One Hundred Years of Spectacle) establishes the personal tone of this collection of original essays in his introduction, recalling how New York City’s very special form of peace, harmony, and democracy… had unraveled in the 1970s and ’80s. The bonding of firsthand recollection to broader historical issues continues throughout the anthology, co-edited by poet, critic and photographer Berger. Joe Anastasio uses his morning subway commute to reflect on his former life as a graffiti artist, while Leonard Levitt’s journalistic background informs his account of the lack of transparency in the city’s police department. For every quirky only in New York moment, like Jim Knipfel’s subway crazies or Luc Sante’s East Village commerce (both legitimate and not), there’s hefty political discussion, such as Leonard Greene’s un-nostalgic look back at Ed Koch’s record on race relations. Not every contribution works: Richard Meltzer’s rant about the North American Calcutta has a creaky, outdated feel, and Meakin Armstrong’s essay about New York’s literary culture is little more than a string of authors and book titles. But with 230 photographs sprinkled throughout, this multivoiced collection establishes itself as a unique document of the city’s last three decades.”

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Published by Reaktion Books, 2007