The Big Con

Name: The Big Con
Price: 39.99 AUD
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ISBN: 9780385495387

The Story of the Confidence Man

David Maurer, Luc Sante

$39.99

Paperback

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English

Bantam Dell Publishing Group, Div of Random House, Inc
20 July 1999

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

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.

By: David Maurer
Introduction by: Luc Sante
Imprint: Bantam Dell Publishing Group, Div of Random House, Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 202mm, Width: 134mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 266g
ISBN: 9780385495387
ISBN 10: 0385495382
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 20 July 1999
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

David W. Maurer was a professor of Linguistics at the University of Louisville until his death in 1981. His other books include Whiz Mob and Kentucky Moonshine. Luc Sante is the author of Low Life, an acclaimed account of New York's underworld.; the memoir Factory of Facts; and Evidence.

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The Big Con

The Story of the Confidence Man

David Maurer, Luc Sante

$39.99

Paperback

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