Rather than focus on just one huckster, Confident Women takes a look at a whole slew of con artists, all of them women. Maurer was a linguist by trade, so this is definitely the one to read if you’re looking to expand your vocabulary of old-timey words for swindling.Ĭonfident Women: Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion by Tori Telfer Maurer’s wide-ranging study of grifters-their methods, their slang, and their motives. Originally published in 1940, The Big Con is David W. Ripley is the essential con artist novel of the 20th century, then The Big Con is the essential nonfiction book. The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man by David W. Ripley was also made into an excellent film starring Jude Law and Matt Damon, but nothing can beat Highsmith’s chilling prose. At first, Tom’s charms seem innocent, but his relationship with Dickie soon turns obsessive-and dangerous. Tom Ripley is a small-time crook who agrees to go to Italy to retrieve Dickie Greenleaf, the wealthy son of a shipping magnate. Patricia Highsmith’s novel is a work of fiction, but no list of books about con artists would be complete without it. The veracity of many-if not all-of his claims have since come into question, but the book remains a page-turning tale of deception. Abagnale claims to have passed more than $2.5 million worth of bad checks while posing as a lawyer, pilot, doctor and other professions for which he had no qualifications. In this partly fictionalized account of his youth, Frank W. AbagnaleĮven before Steven Spielberg adapted this book into a critically acclaimed film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks, Catch Me If You Can was a classic of the con-man genre.
Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake by Frank W. Is it because con artists are so often charming and charismatic? Or are people responding to the Robin Hood element in many of these stories-stealing from the rich and giving to the … less rich? No one has come up with a definitive answer, but in the meantime, crack open one of these con artist books and try to determine the appeal for yourself. Critics and sociologists have long tried to explain the public’s fascination with grifters, who are usually nonviolent but still very much criminals.
0 kommentar(er)
