RESOURCES

Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family

The book Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family was made into the movie GoodFellas.

Which one did you like better, the book or the movie?  There are 4 votes for the book, and 8 votes for the movie.

Book details for Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family

Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family was written by Nicholas Pileggi. The book was published in 1985 by Simon & Schuster. More information on the book is available on Amazon.com.

Nicholas Pileggi also wrote Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas (1995).

Read More About This Book

"At the age of twelve my ambition was to become a gangster. To be a wiseguy. Being a wiseguy was better than being President of the United States. To be a wiseguy was to own the world." -- Henry HillWiseguy is Nicholas Pileggi's remarkable bestseller, th... Read More

"At the age of twelve my ambition was to become a gangster. To be a wiseguy. Being a wiseguy was better than being President of the United States. To be a wiseguy was to own the world." -- Henry Hill

Wiseguy is Nicholas Pileggi's remarkable bestseller, the most intimate account ever printed of life inside the deadly high-stakes world of what some people call the Mafia. Wiseguy is Henry Hill's story, in fascinating, brutal detail, the never-before-revealed day-to-day life of a working mobster -- his violence, his wild spending sprees, his wife, his mistresses, his code of honor.

Henry Hill knows where a lot of bodies are buried, and he turned Federal witness to save his own life. The mob is still hunting him for what he reveals in Wiseguy: hundreds of crimes including arson, extortion, hijacking, and the $6 million Lufthansa heist, the biggest successful cash robbery in U.S. history, which led to ten murders. A firsthand account of the secret world of the mob,

Wiseguy is more compelling than any novel.

Movie details for GoodFellas

The movie was released in 1990 and directed by Martin Scorsese, who also directed Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Casino (1995). More information on the movie is available on Amazon.com.

Actors on this movie include Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Paul Sorvino, Chuck Low, Frank DiLeo, Frank Sivero, Tony Darrow, Mike Starr, Frank Vincent, Frank Adonis, Catherine Scorsese, Gina Mastrogiacomo, Suzanne Shepherd, Debi Mazar, Margo Winkler, Welker White, Julie Garfield and Christopher Serrone.

 

Read More About This Movie

Martin Scorsese's 1990 masterpiece GoodFellas immortalizes the hilarious, horrifying life of actual gangster Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), from his teen years on the streets of New York to his anonymous exile under the Witness Protection Program. The director'... Read More
Martin Scorsese's 1990 masterpiece GoodFellas immortalizes the hilarious, horrifying life of actual gangster Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), from his teen years on the streets of New York to his anonymous exile under the Witness Protection Program. The director's kinetic style is perfect for recounting Hill's ruthless rise to power in the 1950s as well as his drugged-out fall in the late 1970s; in fact, no one has ever rendered the mental dislocation of cocaine better than Scorsese. Scorsese uses period music perfectly, not just to summon a particular time but to set a precise mood. GoodFellas is at least as good as The Godfather without being in the least derivative of it. Joe Pesci's psycho improvisation of Mobster Tommy DeVito ignited Pesci as a star, Lorraine Bracco scores the performance of her life as the love of Hill's life, and every supporting role, from Paul Sorvino to Robert De Niro, is a miracle.