Wise Guy

Product Information

I was a journalist since I was young," says Pileggi. "Right out of college, I went to work at the Associated Press in New York City, in the mid Fifties. I was assigned to cover crime – I covered the police, I covered corruption. That period, in the 1950s and 1960s, was also the period that began to expose Organised Crime, as we came to know it." The book “Wiseguy” is about Henry Hill a member of the Lucchese crime family.The book itself tells a different perspective of the “Mob”. Its seen through the eyes of Nicholas Pileggi the author but told to by Hill himself . It displays an interesting outlook,Mob movies books characters have fascinated the world for so long and its the belief that their is another world more exhilarating and exciting fast paced and the common person is just looking to escape the real world into a book or another life.

Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2012-12-12 17:36:29 Boxid IA120121212-IA1 Boxid_2 CH114201 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York, NY DonorThe book is based on the real life story of a mobster Henry Hill. He used to be a member of Lucchese crime family. A deeper look into a Mafia World And it's something different to know about the Mafia from someone inside the under world. The experience was totally different from reading a Mafia Fiction (i.e. The Godfather, The Sicilian, Omerta etc). When I read The Godfather, I don't know from where it came, but a strange sympathy worked for the Mafia. But when I read this book, I came across to know about Mafia (the real Mafia) that it's totally different from what I read in those fictions. It's not so sympathetic and it's quite brutal and blood thursty. The money and self-interest is everything in this world. In this sense, I will give all the credit to Henry Hill. He was so honest about his detail description. Pileggi, Nicholas (1985). Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family (Firsted.). Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-72322-4. Needless to say, Henry and his pals are amoral scumbags, and Hill is a sociopath whose justification for his crimes is that his needs outweigh everyone else's, and he dismisses anyone who is hardworking, honest or trusting as weak and just asking to be ripped off.

Wiseguy reads so well because Pileggi knew the world he wrote about. And GoodFellas plays so well because Scorsese knew that world too.

So, if like me, you’ve seen the film multiple times, is it worth reading the book? Probably not. It’s good but the overwhelming sense of familiarity makes it all feel very recognisable. That said, if you really love the film then you will inevitably still get quite a lot out of reading the book including quite a lot of interesting detail about what the authorities did leading up to Henry Hill's arrest, and the aftermath of his entry into the Federal Witness Program.

And when you finally get to the end, and see how Hill escapes a bullet in the head (that was issued to everyone else who knew of the Lufthansa heist) to become a Federal employee, you wonder... is this all okay and correct that this should happen? People are killed en route to this, millions of dollars of property and cash are redistributed among wiseguys, and yet the prime mover becomes another man in lieu of the one he never was. I am not sure. What amazed me most is how closely the movie aligns with the book, because let’s be honest people, Hollywood screenwriters have butchered many a book. A lot of Ray Liotta’s, um, I mean Henry Hill’s classic one liners and pithy monologues are straight from the book. Much of the praise for the movie belongs to Pileggi; like the film, Wiseguy is entertaining from start to finish. It’s nonstop. A thriller and absolute banger right to the very end. Oh how I loved it. FIVE STARS!Nicholas Pileggi's non fiction book, ' Wiseguy', is the basis for the film, GoodFellas, directed by Martin Scorsese (1990). It's the true story of Henry Hill, a member of the Lucchese organised crime family in New York. Henry's heyday takes place during the 1960s and 1970s when he works under the protection of mob boss Paul Vario in the Brownsville-East New York section of Brooklyn. Goodfellas ( originally titled Wiseguy) is a terrific true crime book that just stops short of romanticizing the life of a gangster. The book is about working class Italian and Irish gangsters in Brooklyn, starting from their early days in the 1950s to their fall in the 70s and 80s, told through the eyes of a foot soldier - Henry Hill and his wife Karen.