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This book was the basis for the Martin Scorsese movie "Goodfellas" (1990);
with a lot more raw details into the life of Henry Hill, with the Vario
crew in the Lucchese crime family in New York. This is a riveting account
of organized crime as a way of life. The "wiseguy" (mob parlance for
a street-level hoodlum) is Henry Hill, 30-year veteran of a Brooklyn
strong-arm branch of the Luchese crime family, who turned against and
helped convict his former associates five years ago and entered the Federal
Witness Protection Program. Pileggi, a crime reporter for New York writing
here with Hill's cooperation, does a superb job of re-creating the gangster's
career, from his early days as an errand boy (at 12) to racketeer Paulie Vario
in Brooklyn's BrownsvilleEast New York section, to his pivotal roles in
a Boston College point-shaving scandal and the $6-million Lufthansa heist at
Kennedy Airport in 1978. This is a riveting account of organized crime as
a way of life.

Hill's story becomes an extraordinary vantage on a demimonde that lives a
high, violent, score-to-score life in which car theft, hijacking-to-order,
credit-card scams, cigarette smuggling, and other hustles and schemes are as
workaday as 9-to-5 at the office.

It tells the story about mobster turned informant Henry Hill with his first
encounter, his experience and activities in the Mafia after joining all the
way to his drug bust and joining the Witness Protection Program. It is the
basis of the 1990 movie Goodfellas directed by Martin Scorsese. The book tells
the story of mobster-turned informant Henry Hill. Beginning in 1955, Hill
narrates how he began his life of crime at age 12 by working as a gopher for
Paul Vario, the local boss of Henry's working class Irish/Italian neighborhood.
Eventually Hill was "promoted" to selling stolen cigarettes for Vario, which he
was later caught and arrested for in 1959. Hill refused to cooperate with the
police, earning the respect of Vario and Vario's associate, Jimmy Burke.

In 1960, when Henry was 17, he joined the Army, to everybody's surprise. When
questioned about his decision by Vario, Hill explained that he joined to make
his father happy, who knew and disapproved of Henry's association with the
mafia. While stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, however, Hill continued
his hustling. In 1963, due to his criminal activities, Hill was discharged from
the Army and was back on the streets of New York, where he was happily welcomed
back by Vario and Burke. In 1964, Hill met a Tommy DeSimone, a young aspiring
gangster with psychopathic tendencies. Also around this time Henry became
a stick-up man for Vario, and began holding up trucks, stealing the goods and
selling them on the street. In 1965 Hill reluctantly joined Lenny Vario (Paul
Vario's son) on a double date, where he met Karen Friedman, a young Jewish girl
from the Five Towns. After this, the two continued to date and eloped only four
months after meeting. They had their first child, Gregg, in 1966, and the second,
Gina, in 1968.

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