1980s Rio de Janeiro. There's only one king in this city and he's got the mullet, swagger and fake ID to prove it. Introducing Carlos Henrique Raposo, known to all as KAISER. This guy's got more front than Copacabana beach. He's the most loveable of rogues with the most common of dreams: to become a professional footballer. And he isn't about to let trivial details like talent and achievement stand in his way. . . not when he has so many other ways to get what he wants. In one of the most remarkable football stories ever told, Kaiser graduates from abandoned slumdog to star striker, dressing-room fixer, superstar party host and inexhaustible lover. And all without kicking a ball. He's not just the king... he's the Kaiser.

As if history and nature had not provided wonders enough, through the ages humans themselves have contrived more marvels to deceive one another. Sometimes they have concocted evidence when none was available to prove pet theories; sometimes their intention has been to impress or defraud; sometimes they have acted merely for sport. Robert Silverberg tells the stories of a baker's dozen of these scientific hoaxers in a lively, good-humored book that ranges through time and across continents. Here are perpetual-motion machines and space rockets, men on the moon and serpents in the sea. The rogues' gallery is a varied one: Dr. Mesmer, who cast his hypnotic spell on eighteenth-century Paris; Charles Dawson, whose Piltdown Man challenged evolution; Dr. Cook, with his tale of discovering the North Pole; and many others. These are fascinating stories and more than just entertainment. The author explains the scientific background against which the hoaxes appeared and the detective work that led to their exposure. The schemers teach us to be alert, to challenge the evidence, and to appreciate the healthy skepticism that characterizes the scientific method.Robert Silverberg is the author of numerous books, including At Winter's End and The Queen of Springtime, both available in Bison Books editions, and Far Horizons: All New Tales from the Greatest Worlds of Science Fiction.

Why, Timothy Melley asks, have paranoia and conspiracy theory become such prominent features of postwar American culture? In Empire of Conspiracy, Melley explores the recent growth of anxieties about thought-control, assassination, political indoctrination, stalking, surveillance, and corporate and government plots. At the heart of these developments, he believes, lies a widespread sense of crisis in the way Americans think about human autonomy and individuality. Nothing reveals this crisis more than the remarkably consistent form of expression that Melley calls "agency panic" -- an intense fear that individuals can be shaped or controlled by powerful external forces. Drawing on a broad range of forms that manifest this fear -- including fiction, film, television, sociology, political writing, self-help literature, and cultural theory -- Melley provides a new understanding of the relation between postwar American literature, popular culture, and cultural theory.

Empire of Conspiracy offers insightful new readings of texts ranging from Joseph Heller's Catch-22 to the Unabomber "Maniffesto, " from Vance Packard's Hidden Persuaders to recent addition discourse, and from the "stalker" novels of Margaret Atwood and Diane Johnson to the conspiracy fictions of Thomas Pynchon, William Burroughs, Don DeLillo, and Kathy Acker. Throughout, Melley finds recurrent anxieties about the power of large organizations to control human beings. These fears, he contends, indicate the continuing appeal of a form of individualism that is no longer wholly accurate or useful, but that still underpins a national fantasy, of freedom from social control.

Ingenious automatons which appeared to think on their own. Dubious mermaids and wild men who resisted classification. Elegant sleight-of-hand artists who routinely exposed the secrets of their trade. These were some of the playful forms of fraud which astonished, titillated, and even outraged nineteenth-century America's new middle class, producing some of the most remarkable urban spectacles of the century.

In "The Arts of Deception," James W. Cook explores this distinctly modern mode of trickery designed to puzzle the eye and challenge the brain. Championed by the "Prince of Humbug," P. T. Barnum, these cultural puzzles confused the line between reality and illusion. Upsetting the normally strict boundaries of value, race, class, and truth, the spectacles offer a revealing look at the tastes, concerns, and prejudices of America's very first mass audiences. We are brought into the exhibition halls, theaters, galleries, and museums where imposture flourished, and into the minds of the curiosity-seekers who eagerly debated the wonders before their eyes. Cook creates an original portrait of a culture in which ambiguous objects, images, and acts on display helped define a new value system for the expanding middle class, as it confronted a complex and confusing world.

Texfake is the result of three years of investigation into the scandal surrounding the 1988 discovery of forged copies of the Texas Declaration of Independence. The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and The New Yorker all carried articles on the affair, but this is the definitive account of the history and impact of the Texas forger and his wares. Austin rare book dealer Taylor lays out the facts concerning the forgeries: who made them; when and how they were made; how they were discovered; and whether or not the dealers involved know what they were selling. He also reveals for the first time the devastating impact of the looting of Texas libraries by thieves in the 1960s. Taylor discusses in detail all of the printed Texas documents known to have been forged or fabricated and includes a census of every known copy, genuine or fake. The thirty-nine illustrations demonstrate how to distinguish between genuine and forged copies. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Larry McMurtry's introduction delivers on his promise to "slap on a little of the color that Tom Taylor has had to leave off." McMurtry offers an amusing but clear-eyed account of the principal dealers in the affair, Dorman David and John Jenkins, and their "top-speed stampede through the trade" from the perspective of a former employee of David's bookshop and later a dealer who knew both men.

This new research monograph discusses the basis of one of Ireland's most extensive (and profitable) hoaxes: the MacCarthy Mor Affair, and the attendant scandal surrounding the selling of Irish traditional titles to otherwise sane businessmen and professionals. Murphy's research covers the origins of the old Gaelic titles in pre-Norman Ireland. Principally the title of Chief, the collapse of the Gaelic order, the survival of some chiefly titles, the Gaelic Revival and the emergence of the Office of Arms. An account is given of the Office of Chief Herald as part of the new Irish state and the courtesy recognition under Dr. MacLysaght in 1944 and years that followed. Finally the emergence of one Terrence MacCarthy of Belfast as "MacCarthy Mor, Prince of Desmond" and his initial success and final unmasking is amusingly and cogently described.