Audiobook (abridged)2 hours
Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas
Written by Nicholas Pileggi
Narrated by Ken Weitzman, Fred Neumann and Ron Leibman
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
Love, greed and betrayal in the Las Vegas mob.
From Nicholas Pileggi, author of the bestselling Wiseguy -- the #1 bestseller that later became the hit movie Goodfellas -- comes this brilliantly told tale of love, marriage, adultery, murder and revenge Mafia-style, the true story of how the mob finally lost its stranglehold over the multi-billion-dollar casino gambling industry of Las Vegas.
No one knew more about casinos than Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, the gambling mastermind who, with his best friend and partner Anthony Spilotro virtually ran Las Vegas for the mob. For years it was the perfect arrangement -- Lefty provided the smarts and obsessive attention to detail, while Tony made sure the bosses stayed happy with their weekly suitcases filled with millions of dollars in skimmed cash. It was so sweet it should have lasted forever, but Lefty's obsession with running the town -- and Tony's obsession with Lefty's beautiful showgirl wife Geri -- eventually led to the betrayals and investigations that exploded into one of the greatest debacles in the mob's history.
A real-life story of love and betrayal set in America's favorite playground, Casino is a Mafia tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, as well as the inside account of just how the mob lost control of the neon money-making machine it created.
From Nicholas Pileggi, author of the bestselling Wiseguy -- the #1 bestseller that later became the hit movie Goodfellas -- comes this brilliantly told tale of love, marriage, adultery, murder and revenge Mafia-style, the true story of how the mob finally lost its stranglehold over the multi-billion-dollar casino gambling industry of Las Vegas.
No one knew more about casinos than Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, the gambling mastermind who, with his best friend and partner Anthony Spilotro virtually ran Las Vegas for the mob. For years it was the perfect arrangement -- Lefty provided the smarts and obsessive attention to detail, while Tony made sure the bosses stayed happy with their weekly suitcases filled with millions of dollars in skimmed cash. It was so sweet it should have lasted forever, but Lefty's obsession with running the town -- and Tony's obsession with Lefty's beautiful showgirl wife Geri -- eventually led to the betrayals and investigations that exploded into one of the greatest debacles in the mob's history.
A real-life story of love and betrayal set in America's favorite playground, Casino is a Mafia tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, as well as the inside account of just how the mob lost control of the neon money-making machine it created.
Author
Nicholas Pileggi
Nicholas Pileggi is the bestselling author of Wiseguy, Casino, and Blye: Private Eye. He lives in New York.
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Reviews for Casino
Rating: 4.433333333333334 out of 5 stars
4.5/5
90 ratings9 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I was thrilled that my daughter’s boyfriend bought Casino by Nicholas Pileggi for me as a birthday present. This has long been a TBR that I hoped to own one day, and I immediately began reading it, despite the fact that I had five other books going. Pileggi, who collaborated with Martin Scorcese to turn his non-fiction book Wiseguy about mobster Henry Hill into the critically acclaimed film masterpiece Goodfellas, reprises this effort with Casino. Pileggi wrote the screenplay for both films – each directed by Scorcese and casting Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci and Frank Vincent as various underworld characters – which are among my all-time favorite movies. I read Wiseguy sometime back and I always wanted to read Casino. Like Wiseguy, the book version of Casino is very different from the film. A narrative of actual events heavily dependent upon interviews and transcripts, the dramatic element so essential to the film is largely absent here, most prominently because of the way the story is told. For movie fans, it comes as somewhat of a disappointed that while the majority of the people and events depicted in the film are real, many did not occur in the order or the manner related on the screen. However, for those readers interested in the mob and its inner-workings, the factual components of the book are quite fascinating. Still, there remains a kind of dissonance in that the author of the book and the screenplay are the same individual, and the screenplay is, after all, so much more exciting – at least as Scorcese translates it to celluloid.I’m not sure that anyone who never saw Casino would be interested in its eponymous book, although I was taken enough by the content to read it in its entirety in just a few days. At the end of the day, it makes a fine complement to the film, which I look forward to screening again very soon so I can compare truth and fiction while it remains fresh in my head.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Really good companion to the movie.I give it 4 stars,just wish it was even more in depth
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Three stars for being an abridged version . Neither Audible of Scribd have an unabridged version of a book that needs its story told in full. Shameful.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Amazing! Short but to the point! Definitely worth the listen if you enjoy organized crime stories.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Too short. Not nearly as detailed as wiseguys even though there appeared to be a wealth of interesting people and fantastic stories.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5WOW. This book is fantastic from start to finish. The movie of this book is an all time classic and stuck pretty close to the book. But the book is better (as usual). Nicholas Pileggi does this type of book very well, and this is an instant classic.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I found this on a bench at the convention center at the Gartner Conference hotel. It just goes to show you what passes for entertainment with me. Non-fiction.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Very interesting story about the city I love and the people that made it what it is today.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The way they did it makes for a good listen