Synopses & Reviews
Review
"[The book is] entertainment for crime literature addicts....a textbook for prospective confidence men." Edward Frank Allen, The New York Times Book Review, 1940
Review
"A bonanza of wild but credible stories, told concisely with deadpan humor ,as sly and rich in atmosphere as anything this side of Mark Twain." Luc Sante, Salon.com
Review
"The Big Con is righteous! It's an illuminating textbook of the confidence game; it's a deft tour of early twntieth century crime; it's a feast of language." James Ellory, author of L.A. Confidential
Review
"The book is spellbinding: It's origins are in linguistics; it is nominally a work of eriminology; it has blood ties to folklore; it falls within the scope of Americana; it serves up a parcel of social history; and of course it is a robust and springheeled piece of literature." Gia Kourlas, Time Out New York
Synopsis
The classic 1940 study of con men and con games that Luc Sante in Salon called "a bonanza of wild but credible stories, told concisely with deadpan humor, as sly and rich in atmosphere as anything this side of Mark Twain."
"Of all the grifters, the confidence man is the aristocrat," wrote David Maurer, a proposition he definitely proved in The Big Con, one of the most colorful, well-researched, and entertaining works of criminology ever written. A professor of linguistics who specialized in underworld argot, Maurer won the trust of hundreds of swindlers, who let him in on not simply their language but their folkways and the astonishingly complex and elaborate schemes whereby unsuspecting marks, hooked by their own greed and dishonesty, were "taken off" - i.e. cheated--of thousands upon thousands of dollars.
The Big Con is a treasure trove of American lingo (the write, the rag, the payoff, ropers, shills, the cold poke, the convincer, to put on the send) and indelible characters (Yellow Kid Weil, Barney the Patch, the Seldom Seen Kid, Limehouse Chappie, Larry the Lug). It served as the source for the Oscar-winning film The Sting.