Rating: 
Summary: A captivating account of life as a brutish mobster!
Review: "Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll". People say that's what its all about today, and Nicholas Pileggi's book "Wiseguy" exposes the life and times of a man who got to ride this free-wheeling, unadulterated, kill or be kill rollercoaster of a life. From the mid 1960s to the 1980s the reader is captivated by the real life and times of Henry Hill and his rise in the Luchesse crime family. Anyone who reads this book will immediately notice big names and big people involved, like the abduction of Sophia Loren or the heist at Lufthansa. Pileggi gives an authentic, brutishly realistic view of life in the mafia that pulls you in and leaves you breathless
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating depiction of organized crime.
Review: This is a great book. It reads better than a novel, yet it's non-fiction; I couldn't put it down. The "wiseguys" pull every scam in the book - hijacking, gambling, robbery, trading untaxed cigarettes - and pay off anyone to accomplish this. They either pay fines or serve short contempt sentences for their crimes, if they're caught. If finally imprisoned, they're treated as if they were gods, and begin pulling new "scores" even in the can.
Unbelievable, yet told first-hand.
Rating:
Summary: Memoir of a "Frontline" mafioso
Review: Wiseguy is the story of Henry Hill, a relatively minor associate member of the Luchese crime family of New York. Henry Hill is a half-Irish, half-Sicilian boy, who knew from a very early age that he wanted to be a wiseguy, a gangster. The movie "Goofellas", starring Ray Liotta as Henry Hill, is a rather good adaptation of this book. The book tells the story of Henry Hill, how he eventually becomes an errand boy for the Varios, a family of mafioso under the umbrella of the Lucheses (one of the Five Families in New York) and works his way up the ladder, making bigger heists, bigger scores, and loving every minute of it. Only when his involvement as a drug dealer and his subsequent arrest threaten to put him away for a long time does Hill finally make the decision to rat out his friends of 25 years and enter the Witness Protection Program in exchange for information leading to the conviction of bigger fish. The book also takes down the recollections of Henry Hill's wife, Karen, who, despite an upper-crust upbringing, is irresistably drawn to the danger and excitement Henry brings into her otherwise humdrum, yet comfortable life. Overall, this book paints an interesting portrait of life as a career criminal, where larceny, armed robbery, and intimidation are all in a day's work. This is in stark contrast to those familiar with "The Godfather" which is more about the lives of Mafia "royalty" and how the problems of wealthy, pwerful people are similar, whether they are kings, heads of state, or leaders of crime syndicates.
Rating: 
Summary: Insightful, interesting, and a little shocking.
Review: This is an excellent book about the life of Henry Hill, a petty mobster in New York State. This book, of course, is the basis for the superb movie "Goodfellas." While The Godfather is a fictional account of the underworld's upper realm, Henry Hill was a part of the lower echelon of the Mafia. The people that run protection rackets, hold-ups, grand thefts, etc. and then pay tribute to the "made" members of the Mafia, who are mainly pure-blooded Sicilians and who form an elite that people like Henry Hill could do business with, but never quite be part of. The book is extremely interesting because of the picture it shows us of organized crime "where the rubber hits the road." The most astounding thing I took away from the book is that Hill and his confederates didn't really benefit all that much from their ill-gotten gains. Instead, they tended to literally throw their money away on a silly, lavish, extravagant lifestyle, featuring, for example $100 tips to doormen, big bribes to get the best tables at restaurants, etc. Hill explained that he saw no need to save because he could always generate all the earnings he needed. Wrong! Most of us are unaware that organized crime is such a large presence in society, costing all of us immense amounts of money. This book drives that point home and it is a shocking revelation. The other insight of the book, which also comes out brilliantly in the film, is that Hill and his fellow mobsters viewed themselves as far above ordinary schmucks who actually work for a living. After all, why work if you can spend a few hours a day playing the rackets making ten times as much? But after reading the book, the wantoness, pointlessness, and gruesome violence of the underworld is readily apparent, and it is clear that Hill and his associates were ultimately undone by their corrupt lives. The story is one of initial prosperity followed by a descent into corruption, mindless brutality, and ultimately betrayal and prison. I give the book four stars, mainly for its content and insight. I didn't find the writing to be much better than average, but the subject matter is outstanding, so four stars. That ain't bad.
Rating:
Summary: What it was really like
Review: For those of you who have seen Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas and loved it--and I know there are many of you--you owe it to yourself to read the book upon which it is based. Nicholas Pileggi does a superb job of bringing the real life of crime lived by Henry Hill into the mind of the reader. There are several notable differences between details in the book and the way they are rendered on the screen by Scorsese; for instance, the names of people have obviously been changed in some, certainly not all, cases (i.e. Henry Hill and his family are the same, of course). But the best thing about Pileggi's book is the way it goes the extra mile and much more in filling in the gaps, giving us the entire scoop on key events, such as the Lufthansa heist and Henry's prison life, where the movie is only able to graze the surface. Believe me, owning this book is like being able to carry around the testament of Henry Hill in all its juicy glory. Alternating between hard-egded, unflinching reportage style and actual "straight from the horse's mouth" confessions spoken by Hill himself, as well as by his wife Karen and a few other more minor personnages, Pileggi weaves a dizzying spell that goes well beyond the who-did-what-when-where school of crime writing. As I was reading I truly got a sense of what inspired Henry Hill to choose the path he did and, thanks to Pileggi's sure hand as a guide, even able to appreciate his choices in some way. Definitely a must-read. Waste no time, get to it.
Rating:
Summary: Must-read companion to Goodfellas
Review: Remember in high school when your teacher said the movie was never as good as the book? She had never seen "Goodfellas", one of many film adaptations to supersede its source material ("A Clockwork Orange", "The English Patient" and "A River Runs Through It" being others). But only focusing on the brilliant film that blossomed from its pages is to diminish the revolutionary work that is Nicolas Pileggi's "Wiseguy", the must read companion to one of the greatest films of the second half of the twentieth century.
"Wiseguy" is primarily told through the voice of Henry Hill, one of the most famous Americans to take advantage of the FBI's Witness Protection Program. The book is his story, from his early pre-teen fascination with the wiseguys in his neighborhood, through his involvement in some of the biggest crimes of the 1960s and 70s and finally to the choice he had to make between death, life in prison or ratting out his friends.
The legacy of Henry Hill's truthful account of his life in the mob is that we finally see an unromantic depiction of organized crime. Before "Wiseguy" and "Goodfellas", the popular depiction of the mafia was the regal, operatic characters and events in The Godfather films. While the Puzo/Coppola trilogy may be a better story and may make better films, their work seems unrealistic and almost fanciful compared to the real stories of the mob. Just as "Unforgiven" attempted to correct the mythic idea of the American West perpetuated in the films of John Wayne at others, "Wiseguy" and "Goodfellas" (and now "The Sopranos") do the same for the crime genre.
Rating:
Summary: Wiseguy
Review: It was one of the biggest heists in American history. The cash payoff had so many zeros after it; it would have made any regular workingman faint. Everything went according to plan, and the guy who helped make it all happen was Henry Hill. This man practically grew up in the mafia, although he could never be made because he wasn't 100% Italian. But after all the success, everyone involved started turning against each other and turning up dead in their Cadillacs with ice-picks through the back of their heads, or frozen to death in the back of an ice locker. Henry Hill was the only one who made it out of the thing out of jail or alive, and Nicholas Pileggi brings his amazing story to life in "Wiseguy."
The book follows the real-life rise and fall of Henry Hill: from age 11 when he started working at the cabstand across the street from his house running errands for a fat mob boss named Vario; to age 22, when he met and married the love of his life Karen; to when his last resort to escape his coke addiction, jail or death was to rat out his accomplices and go into witness protection. As the jacket of the book says: "This is no guided tour. The reader is taken deep inside the inner workings of organized crime." Luckily this story was put into publication by an author like Nicholas Pileggi who tells it like a grainy, 1930's mobster flick, complete with fiery blasts of James Cagney-style gangster glory.
The book flows and feels like a movie, in fact the great Martin Scorsese adapted the book to film in the Oscar winning, 1990 classic, Goodfellas. The film did a brilliant job illustrating the epic story-Scorsese couldn't have gotten a better cast. Every time Henry Hill spoke in the book, I heard Ray Liotta speaking, and every time the notorious Tommy Vario beat some guy into submission and looked down at the poor sap's bloody face and laughed I saw Joe Pesci. In conclusion, after reading the book, I felt like I knew the characters. I felt like I had just sat down with Henry Hill himself and he told the whole thing to me. The way the book was written (the slang, the foul language, and the action) only reinforced this feeling. The book also gave me a new respect for the film I already loved, Goodfellas. I recommend this book to anyone who likes action or crime movies and books, and I would definitely read some other books by Nicholas Pileggi, or even re-read this one. "Wiseguy" is truly a Mafioso masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: Insightful, interesting, and a little shocking.
Review: This is an excellent book about the life of Henry Hill, a petty mobster in New York State. This book, of course, is the basis for the superb movie "Goodfellas." While The Godfather is a fictional account of the underworld's upper realm, Henry Hill was a part of the lower echelon of the Mafia. The people that run protection rackets, hold-ups, grand thefts, etc. and then pay tribute to the "made" members of the Mafia, who are mainly pure-blooded Sicilians and who form an elite that people like Henry Hill could do business with, but never quite be part of. The book is extremely interesting because of the picture it shows us of organized crime "where the rubber hits the road." The most astounding thing I took away from the book is that Hill and his confederates didn't really benefit all that much from their ill-gotten gains. Instead, they tended to literally throw their money away on a silly, lavish, extravagant lifestyle, featuring, for example $100 tips to doormen, big bribes to get the best tables at restaurants, etc. Hill explained that he saw no need to save because he could always generate all the earnings he needed. Wrong! Most of us are unaware that organized crime is such a large presence in society, costing all of us immense amounts of money. This book drives that point home and it is a shocking revelation. The other insight of the book, which also comes out brilliantly in the film, is that Hill and his fellow mobsters viewed themselves as far above ordinary schmucks who actually work for a living. After all, why work if you can spend a few hours a day playing the rackets making ten times as much? But after reading the book, the wantoness, pointlessness, and gruesome violence of the underworld is readily apparent, and it is clear that Hill and his associates were ultimately undone by their corrupt lives. The story is one of initial prosperity followed by a descent into corruption, mindless brutality, and ultimately betrayal and prison. I give the book four stars, mainly for its content and insight. I didn't find the writing to be much better than average, but the subject matter is outstanding, so four stars. That ain't bad.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing book!!!!!!!!!
Review: If you thought the movie Goodfellas was amazing then you must read the book!!!!!
The book and the movie are very similar and blend almost identical.
However, the book gives you alot more depth and more information.
More importantly the book gives you dozens of other great stories that are not mentioned in the movie.
Learn about dozens of other Henry hills scams including the famous boston college basketball scams.
You dont have to a "mob lover" to read this. I dont like the mafia at all but I love the drama in the mob books.
Henry Hill is a scam artist and not your average cold-blooded mob scum-bag killer. People can all relate to henry on some level.
|
