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Nicholas Pileggi admitted somewhere that the screenplay for Goodfellas, co-written with Martin Scorsese, improved on his book: it's more succinct, more impactful. He was right.

Still, the book is also excellent, a worthy progenitor of the greatest gangster film--and one of the greatest films of any kind--ever made. I enjoyed seeing just how many of Henry Hill's own words made it on to the page--and from there to the screen--verbatim. Goodfellas radiates authenticity for the best possible reason.

Wiseguy even has some advantages over its still-more-brilliant offspring. A two-and-a-half- hour biopic must necessarily simplify and omit events. In Henry Hill's case, a lot of those events are interesting.

The Boston College point shaving scheme, for example. It's barely alluded to in Goodfellas (just once, by a low level con man named Morris, right before Tommy, Joe Pesci's famously terrifying character, drives a shiv repeatedly into his brain stem). Wiseguy, with more room to roam, delves into the nitty gritty. If, like me, you're fascinated by such details, then the book is an indispensable companion of the film.

I've read Wiseguys at least 3 times and watched Goodfellas more times than I can remember, but I can't imagine ever getting tired of either.