Explore the vast range of titles available.

An account of a real-life mobster's criminal career before he turned himself in as a federal witness.

The classic mob movie Casino was based on a book by the author and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi.

The inhabitants of [Nicholas Pileggi]'s world are real, even if they have Runyonesque names like Vincent (The Chin) Gigante, Carmine (The Snake) Persico and Anthony (Gas Pipe) Casso. Growing up in Brooklyn streets fought over by the Profaci and Colombo crime families, Pileggi identified with movie gangsters like Bogey and Cagney. But unlike Henry Hill, his eponymous Wiseguy, he showed no Photo: The Canadian Press / Author Nicholas Pileggi poses in his New York office in July. Pileggi writes real- life best sellers, films and TV series' about the Mafia. ;

A REAL WISEGUY: Nicholas Pileggi poses in his New York office.

The principal character is Frank \"Lefty\" Rosenthal, the gambling mastermind who, with his friend since boyhood, Anthony \"Tony the Ant\" Spilotro - \"a mobster's mobster, tough, violent and shrewd, a Mafia hit man\" - formed one of the most powerful and controversial teams and ran Las Vegas for the Chicago mob for much of the 1970s and '80s. Tony's sideline activities were extortion, loan-sharking, robbing bookies, dealers, hustlers and pimps, sidelines that initiated the downfall of the team's success.

In the book, [Nicholas Pileggi] quoted turncoat mobster Henry Hill - whose testimony eventually helped convict [Burke] of murder - as saying Burke loved stealing so much so that \"If you ever offered Jimmy a billion dollars, he'd turn you down and then try to figure out how to steal it from you.\" Burke was a \"criminal savant\" who would tear into the cargo of a stolen trailer \"like a greedy child at Christmas,\" Pileggi wrote. Known as \"Jimmy the Gent\" for his dapper appearance, Burke had an arrest record from age 18 and, according to law enforcement officials, ran his illegal operations from Robert's Lounge, a bar in his native Queens. [Richard Eaton], who purportedly owed Burke $250,000 from a cocaine deal, was found frozen and trussed up in a Brooklyn trailer in 1979. Burke was sentenced to 20 years to life for murder.

Nicholas Pileggi, the author of \"Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas,\" will be the guest of honor at a fund-raising benefit for the Waldo-Knox AIDS Coalition in March, with the date to be announced.

[Nicholas Pileggi] is probably best known in this country for his movie connections. He's the the third husband of screenwriter Nora Ephron. Wiseguy, his book about Mafia turncoat Henry Hill, was the basis for Martin Scorsese's hit movie Goodfellas and Scorsese has also filmed Casino, starring Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. Casino focuses on the ruthless pair who headed the Mafia's Las Vegas operation in the 1970s and '80s -- quick-thinking, supercool Lefty Rosenthal and his loudmouthed, psychopathic chum, Tony Spilotro. Not that Pileggi ever refers directly to the Mafia in the book. He calls it \"the outfit\".

\"Everybody writes about the same thing, the classic verities, the old truths, the kind of things that move people, the sins of pride and greed,\" [Nicholas Pileggi] said. \"But you can only write about them well in the world you know. ... I can't write about them in the world of Scandinavian fishermen. I am not a Scandinavian.\" Pileggi co-wrote the script for that movie with [Martin Scorsese], and the two teamed up again on \"Casino,\" which opens this month starring Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, and Joe Pesci. This time around, Pileggi and Scorsese wrote the script before the book, because Scorsese had an opening in his filmmaking schedule and wanted to do \"Casino.\"