"Of all the grifters, the confidence man is the aristocrat, " wrote
David Maurer, a proposition he definitively 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 products of amazing ingenuity, crack
timing, and attention to every last detail, these "big cons" richly
deserve Maurer's description as "the most effective swindling
device which man has ever invented."
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 a source for the Oscar-winning film The Sting
and will delight fans of such writers as David Mamet, Jim Thompson,
Elmore Leonard, and William Burroughs for its droll, utterly
authoritative look at the timeless pursuit of relieving one's
fellow man of his surplus cash.
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