Ebenezer Scrooge's cry of 'Humbug!' is well known throughout the English-speaking world. But what did he mean? In this entertaining book, P. T. Barnum (1810-91), defines 'humbug' as 'glittering appearances by which to suddenly arrest public attention, and attract the public eye and ear'. A showman himself and the creator of 'The Greatest Show on Earth', Barnum was famous for his own tricks, and describes here some of the most fascinating and outrageous examples perpetrated in his time. He explores the cases of Mr Warren, who wrote an advertisement in enormous letters on the pyramids of Giza, and the Fox daughters, who caused a stir among spiritualists in New York when they held seances with tapping spirits - in fact their own cracking knee joints. First published in 1866, this tour of Victorian humbug, fraud, superstition and quackery will appeal to social historians and readers interested in nineteenth-century popular culture.

The first survey of the many redesigned and imitation historical landmarks and objects that dot the globe "John Darlington shows . . . it is not just written history that is malleable; it is also history on the ground, heritage in brick and stone, wood and metal."-Simon Jenkins, Times Literary Supplement What happens when the past-or, more specifically, a piece of cultural heritage-is fabricated? From 50 replica Eiffel Towers located around the world to Saddam Hussein's reconstructions of ancient cities, examples of forged heritage are widespread. Some are easy to dismiss as blatant frauds (the Piltdown Man), while others adhere to honest copying or respectful homage (the Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee). This compelling book examines copies of historic buildings, faux archaeological sites, and other false artifacts, using them to explore the ethics and consequences of reconstructing the past; it also tackles the issues involved with faithful, "above-board" re-creations of ancient landmarks. John Darlington probes questions of historical authenticity, seeking the lessons that lurk when history is twisted to tell an untrue story. Amplified by stunning images, the narrative underscores how the issue of duplicating heritage is both intriguing and incredibly complex, especially in the twenty-first century-as communication and technology flourish, so too do our opportunities to be deceived.

Teary, big-eyed orphans and a multitude of trashy knockoffs epitomized American kitsch art as they clogged thrift stores for decades.

When Adam Parfrey tracked down Walter Keane--the credited artist of the weepy waifs, for a "San Diego Reader" cover story in 1992--he discovered some shocking facts. Decades of lawsuits and countersuits revealed the reality that Keane was more of a con man than an artist, and that he forced his wife Margaret to sign his name to her own paintings. As a result, those weepy waifs may not have been as capricious an invention as they seemed.

Parfrey's story was reprinted in "Juxtapoz" magazine and inspired a Margaret Keane exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum. And now director Tim Burton is filming a movie about the Keanes called "Big Eyes," and it's scheduled for release in 2014. Burton's "Ed Wood," starring Johnny Depp, was based upon the Feral House book edited and published by Parfrey about the angora sweater-wearing B-film director.

"Citizen Keane" is a book-length expansion of Parfrey's original article, providing fascinating biographical and sociological details, photographs, color reproductions, and appendices with legal documents and pseudonymous essays by Tom Wolfe inflating big eye art to those painted by the great masters.

Named a Best Book of 2018 by the Financial Times and Fortune, this thrilling (Bill Gates) New York Times bestseller exposes how a modern Gatsby swindled over $5 billion with the aid of Goldman Sachs in the heist of the century (Axios). Now a #1 international bestseller, Billion Dollar Whale is an epic tale of white-collar crime on a global scale (Publishers Weekly), revealing how a young social climber from Malaysia pulled off one of the biggest heists in history. In 2009, a chubby, mild-mannered graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business named Jho Low set in motion a fraud of unprecedented gall and magnitude--one that would come to symbolize the next great threat to the global financial system. Over a decade, Low, with the aid of Goldman Sachs and others, siphoned billions of dollars from an investment fund--right under the nose of global financial industry watchdogs. Low used the money to finance elections, purchase luxury real estate, throw champagne-drenched parties, and even to finance Hollywood films like The Wolf of Wall Street. By early 2019, with his yacht and private jet reportedly seized by authorities and facing criminal charges in Malaysia and in the United States, Low had become an international fugitive, even as the U.S. Department of Justice continued its investigation. Billion Dollar Whale has joined the ranks of Liar's Poker, Den of Thieves, and Bad Blood as a classic harrowing parable of hubris and greed in the financial world.

This is-for the first time-the full and unedited story behind the sick life and mysterious death of Jeffrey Epstein that is being called one of the most significant scandals in American history He was the billionaire financier and close confidant of presidents, prime ministers, movie stars and British royalty, the mysterious self-made man who rose from blue-collar Brooklyn to the heights of luxury. But while he was flying around the world on his private jet and hosting lavish parties at his private island in the Caribbean, he also was secretly masterminding an international child sex ring-one that may have involved the richest and most influential men in the world. The conspiracy of corruption was an open secret for decades. And then in the summer of 2019, it all came crashing down. After his arrest on sex trafficking charges in July 2019, it seemed Epstein's darkest secrets would finally see the light. But hopes for true justice were shattered on August 10, when he was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York. The verdict: suicide. The timing: convenient, to say the least. Now, Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales delivers bombshell new revelations, uncovers how the man President Trump once described as a "terrific guy" abused hundreds of underage girls at his mansions in Palm Beach and Manhattan... all while entertaining the world's most powerful men-including President Clinton, Prince Andrew, and Donald Trump himself. How much did they know about his perversions? And did they take part? How might they have helped him to continue his abuse, and to escape justice for it? What responsibility might they have for his sudden, shocking death? And is there a shocking spy and blackmail story at the heart of the scandal? The answers to these questions and more will be explored in Epstein: Dead Men Tell No Tales with groundbreaking new reporting, never-before-seen court files, and interviews with new witnesses and confidants. Combining the very best investigative reporting from investigative journalists Dylan Howard, Melissa Cronin and James Robertson-who have been covering the case for close to a decade-will send shockwaves through the highest levels of the establishment.

A thoroughly entertaining and darkly humorous roundup of history's notorious but often forgotten female con artists and their bold, outrageous scams-by the acclaimed author of Lady Killers. From Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey to Frank Abagnale and Charles Ponzi, audacious scams and charismatic scammers continue to intrigue us as a culture. As Tori Telfer reveals in Confident Women, the art of the con has a long and venerable tradition, and its female practitioners are some of the best-or worst. In the 1700s in Paris, Jeanne de Saint-Remy scammed the royal jewelers out of a necklace made from six hundred and forty-seven diamonds by pretending she was best friends with Queen Marie Antoinette. In the mid-1800s, sisters Kate and Maggie Fox began pretending they could speak to spirits and accidentally started a religious movement that was soon crawling with female con artists. A gal calling herself Loreta Janeta Velasquez claimed to be a soldier and convinced people she worked for the Confederacy-or the Union, depending on who she was talking to. Meanwhile, Cassie Chadwick was forging paperwork and getting banks to loan her upwards of $40,000 by telling people she was Andrew Carnegie's illegitimate daughter. In the 1900s, a 40something woman named Margaret Lydia Burton embezzled money all over the country and stole upwards of forty prized show dogs, while a few decades later, a teenager named Roxie Ann Rice scammed the entire NFL. And since the death of the Romanovs, women claiming to be Anastasia have been selling their stories to magazines. What about today? Spoiler alert: these "artists" are still conning. Confident Women asks the provocative question: Where does chutzpah intersect with a uniquely female pathology-and how were these notorious women able to so spectacularly dupe and swindle their victims?

"Marcius writes with genuine narrative power. Her depth of research provides insights into this historical escape that we can't get anywhere else " --Anthony Flacco, New York Times and international bestselling author A gripping, true-crime debut of imprisonment, escape, and survival from New York Daily News crime reporter Chelsia Rose Marcius. On June 6, 2015, inmates Richard Matt and David Sweat escaped from Clinton Correctional Facility, New York State's largest maximum security prison. The media was instantly obsessed with the story: aided by a prison seamstress, who smuggled hacksaw blades, chisels, and drill bits inside the facility via a vat of raw hamburger meat, the two convicted murderers sliced their way through steel cell walls, meandered through a maze of tunnels, climbed out of a manhole, and walked off into the night. Only a handful of inmates had successfully broken out of Clinton since the facility opened in 1845, and not many had made the attempt. Barbed wire, stone walls, and the wilderness of the Adirondacks have all served as physical and psychological barriers to freedom. This seemingly impossible Shawshank-esque escape had the makings of a Hollywood film, and the public hung on to every twist as the story developed. After nearly three weeks on the run, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent Christopher Voss shot and killed Matt on June 26, 2015. Two days later New York State Police Sgt. Jay Cook shot Sweat twice in the back. He survived. While we have come to learn how Matt and Sweat pulled off perhaps the most elaborate modern day prison break, no reporter, except Chelsia Rose Marcius, has talked directly to Sweat to ask the most important question in the case: Of all the inmates who dream of escape, why was he the one who could make it happen? "The details Marcius has amassed are comprehensive and stunning and serve to heighten the impact of her story. This is first-rate journalism, written about a crime and a criminal from the inside out." --Stephen Singular, New York Times bestselling author

One day in November 1958, the celebrated historian Hugh Trevor-Roper received a curious letter. It was an appeal for help, written on behalf of a student at Magdalen College, with the unlikely claim that he was being persecuted by the Bishop of Oxford. Curiosity piqued, Trevor-Roper agreed to a meeting. It was to be his first encounter with Robert Parkin Peters: plagiarist, bigamist, fraudulent priest and imposter extraordinaire.

The Professor and the Parson traces the strange career of one of Britain's most eccentric criminals. Motivated not by money but by a desire for prestige, Peters' lied, stole and cheated his way to academic positions and religious posts from Cambridge to New York, Singapore and South Africa. Frequently deported, and even more frequently discovered, his trail of destruction included seven marriages (three of which were bigamous), an investigation by the FBI and a disastrous appearance on Mastermind.

Based on Trevor-Roper's own detailed 'file on Peters', The Professor and the Parson is a witty and charming account of eccentricity, extraordinary narcissism and a life as wild and unlikely as any in fiction.

An enthralling exploration of the most audacious and underhanded deceptions in the history of mankind, from sacred relics to financial schemes to fake art, music, and identities. World history is littered with tall tales and those who have fallen for them. Ian Tattersall, a curator emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, and Peter Nevraumont, an award-winning book producer, have teamed up to create this anti-history of the world, in which Michelangelo fakes a cupid; the holy foreskin is venerated; arctic explorers search for an entrance into a hollow Earth; a woman is elected Pope; and people can survive on only air and sunshine. Told chronologically, HOAX begins with the first documented announcement of the end of the world from 365 AD and winds its way through controversial tales such as the Loch Ness Monster and the Shroud of Turin, past proven fakes such as the Thomas Jefferson's ancient wine and the Davenport Tablets built by a lost race, and explores bald-faced lies in the art world, journalism, and archeology.

Audley V. Walsh presents a fascinating overview of the popular street (and con) game of Three Card Monte, with contributions by magician John Scarne. There are multiple methods and card maneuvers used by tricksters of which the general public is unaware and magicians can incorporate into their acts Walsh (1894-1957) was a Vaudeville comic turned policeman, and an expert on gambling fraud.

Why do serial killers gravitate towards certain kinds of occupation? Jobs with minimum oversight or ties, the opportunity to leave the radar and that bring them into proximity with potential victims and whilst hiding in plain sight. Why also do they target certain types of victim?Through his wide knowledge of the topic honed at one of Britain's leading centres for criminological studies, Adam Lynes demonstrates how theory, practice, profiling and behaviour intertwine to identify the kind of people we should fear (and especially if we fall within certain categories of vulnerable people). The book also looks at those personality-types most likely to become serial killers.From the text: "It is apparent that driving as a form of occupational choice is a "popular" form of employment for British serial murderers. In an effort to determine why this may be, [the] case studies of eight British serial murderers [in the book] demonstrate just how such an occupation can impact upon these offenders' criminal behaviour ...These findings may prove to be of benefit to scholars of serial murder, and to those who attempt to apprehend them." From Britain's serial killing centre of excellence.Looks in depth at eight of Britain's serial killer drivers, dealing with some of the most notorious crimes of modern times. A fresh and uniquely interesting perspective. Demonstrates the links between mobility, transience, recognisance, predatory behaviour and acting out murderous fantasy. Will be used for a range of courses on the subject.