Customer Reviews

The Hoods

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As an impressionable highschooler back in the 50's this book was so interesting I have never forgotten the characters after all these years. The mental images of the New York tenements, the bathroom in the hallway which was shared by these apartment dwellers....the progression of the tough kids growing up. The film 'Once Upon A Time In America' was one of the few movies where your memories of the written story were not distorted by a screenplay version. This is a book that I had to hide, lest my mother would find it and kill me!! I had similar hidden 'treasures of literature' of the same scandalous nature such as Peyton Place, From Here to Eternity, The Amboy Dukes....these were all very controversial in the 50's because they were about sex and profanity...my, how times have changed!

This book is the only one i've ever read with a narrative from a gangster.It's chock full of vice,circa teens and roaring twenties details and slang that i regard as pretty much priceless.I love the Sergio Leone epic, and the graceful violence and nostalgia, but i've come to regard the book and the film as two seperate entities. The book is not really much of an epic. It's the plainly stated tale of Jewish gangsters ( a rarity these days. I should know. I'm Jewish).And it's accessible for two reasons: For one,it's straightforward, but also, i think people, assuming this book ever gets back in print, will be fascinated by the anectdotes and episodes of violence.

I have to admit the movie was better but the book was good. Dont listen to those other reviews saying how dumb this book is. This book is great and gives much more detail then the movie. It is different then movie but remember this book came out 30 years before the movie did. It gives you a lot more info on Cockeye and Pasty then the movie does. There are a lot of differences in the book but characters are the same.

a story about lower east side jewish mobsters from 1918-1930's...the author tells his story through the narrator, noodles, one of the rough and tumble mobsters...told in a straight-forward manner, we follow these toughs from their time in grade school to the depression and prohibition...there's extortion, murder and lots of mayhem but these guys always come out on top.....then comes the tragic end...the author, harry grey, must have been the noodles character in real life...he has so many stories with vivid details, that can be my only conclusion....he wrote the book in 1952, so at the time most of his colleagues were probably still alive, so he wrote his story, i believe with the fear of retribution, but did do anyway....this is a real mob story if ever there was one....a must companion to the movie, that elaborates on "pipe-dreams." if you saw the movie you know what i'm talking about....shalom

Harry Gray's book is the most accurate book I've ever read regarding growing up in the city. So many of his characters, locations and circumstances bring to mind my own youth in the city that I wonder if he wasn't hanging around the corner from me. A must read for anyone although perhaps few may appreciate it's honesty.

If a book can be judged based upon the impact of remembrance through the years ,this is the book .I read this as a teenager many years ago and still can reminisce on the almost elegaic memory of "Noodles""Patsy" and the gang.When I saw"Once Upon a Time in America",the score captured perfectly the tone of loss and broken bonds.I searched all over and finally found it.

This book is a great book for all the lovers of Sergio Leones masterpiece "Once Upon a time in america". For all of that love that movie, this book is what we needed to complete this long story that Noodles and his gang lived.

After reading this book, you could conclude if Noodles did infact have a nightmare or it was the reality.

Its just incredible to read, you feel you are in the story. Its a great book, I really recommend it!

a page turner - - - highly recommend it - - if you liked once upon a time in america - or any mob movie, for that matter - this book trumps them all....

Having finally seen the uncut version of Leone's movie "Once Upon A Time in America," I was curious to read the book, written by one "Harry Grey," a.k.a., Harry Goldberg, a.k.a., Noodles--the Robert Di Nero character. I wasn't expecting much from a high school dropout hood from the Lower East Side, but the book was great, and the movie was surprisingly faithful to the original.

I really enjoyed reading this book.I'm an avid reader on the subject of gangster life and THE HOODS is about the best, on the same level of writing as Mario Puzo's later classic novel The Godfather.Harry Grey does a brilliant job of writing about how a violent, powerful crew of Jewish mobsters from the lower east side of Manhatten lived and operated.As a historian on the subject, I found a lot of true facts in the book itself about how the "The Syndicate"for example, grew into a national crime cartel.The Brooklyn hit squad known as "MURDER, INC" comes to mind.The writer also does a great job as far as giving the reader a lot of insight as to how gangsters lived at that time.It's all here in this novel, from the contract killings,Bootlegging,opium smoking,showgirls and sex,unions and other crime operations.I could not put this book down when I started reading it.This is required reading for anyone interested on the subject of gangsterism in the 1920's.