"It’s a startling and disconcerting read that should make you think twice every time a friend of a friend offers you the opportunity of a lifetime.” —Erik Larson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dead Wake and bestselling author of Devil in the White City Think you can’t get conned? Think again. The New York Times bestselling author of Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes explains how to spot the con before they spot you. “[An] excellent study of Con Artists, stories & the human need to believe” –Neil Gaiman, via Twitter A compelling investigation into the minds, motives, and methods of con artists—and the people who fall for their cons over and over again. While cheats and swindlers may be a dime a dozen, true conmen—the Bernie Madoffs, the Jim Bakkers, the Lance Armstrongs—are elegant, outsized personalities, artists of persuasion and exploiters of trust. How do they do it? Why are they successful? And what keeps us falling for it, over and over again? These are the questions that journalist and psychologist Maria Konnikova tackles in her mesmerizing new book. From multimillion-dollar Ponzi schemes to small-time frauds, Konnikova pulls together a selection of fascinating stories to demonstrate what all cons share in common, drawing on scientific, dramatic, and psychological perspectives. Insightful and gripping, the book brings readers into the world of the con, examining the relationship between artist and victim. The Confidence Game asks not only why we believe con artists, but also examines the very act of believing and how our sense of truth can be manipulated by those around us.

The Confidence Game by Maria Konnikova | Summary & Analysis Preview: The Confidence Game is a nonfiction examination of con games. It considers both the minds and methods of con artists and the minds and weaknesses of the people who fall victim to their schemes. Con artists are some of the most intuitive psychologists in the world. They are able to read people quickly and easily. They understand what different people want and they take advantage of this by offering them easy solutions: by appearing at the right time, in the right way, with the desired offer… PLEASE NOTE: This is key takeaways and analysis of the book and NOT the original book. Inside this Instaread Summary of The Confidence Game: · Overview of the book · Important People · Key Takeaways · Analysis of Key Takeaways

Drawing on modern studies of rhetoric and the concept of the Trickster, the author examines Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and Nathanael West as creators of a fictive experience centered in deceptive or problematic transactions of confidence. The model of a confidence game, suggested by the writers' own thematic preoccupations, permits an analysis of the social motivations inherent in the fiction. The author concentrates on the process by which confidence is established and the ways in which deception leads to regeneration and an altered perception of authority. His approach increases our understanding of the interrelation between the writer, his reader, and the world each envisions. Warwick Wadlington examines individual texts, as well as the pattern of each writer's total work. His book distinctively combines an enlarging archetypal frame with rhetorical analysis of the writer-reader imaginative act. Treated as different forms of a coherent mode of fictive experience, the works of these important authors illuminate each other. Professor Wadlington's method results in decisively new readings of each text and contributes to a phenomenology of reading three writers whose works represent crucial "moments" in the artist-audience negotiation of mutual faith. Originally published in 1975. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

She’s a thief. He’s a grifter. Game on. For Natalia Levin, life as a professional art thief is everything she hoped it would be. She travels the world, the pay is fantastic, and she gets to work in sweet, sweet solitude. But when a rival crew reaches out about joining forces to steal the one painting she’s always dreamed of, that’s an invitation she can’t resist. Natalia figures it’ll be easy to keep the new crew at arm’s length, but her plans hit a snag when she meets their leader: smooth-talking grifter Diego Cabrera. He’s a liar, a con man, and too slick for his own good, but he’s beguiling and handsome and one hell of a storyteller. Too bad she’s going to screw him over, anyway… But as Diego cranks up the charm, Natalia’s finding it harder and harder to keep up her charade. Not because she can’t outwit him, but because she’s starting to do the one thing she told herself she’d never do: trust him. With passions igniting, Natalia is starting to realize she’s made a terrible mistake: she put her heart on the line while playing a confidence game.

Gaming and Gambling Law: Cases and Materials combines policy interrogatories and the application of legal concepts in a thoughtful examination of gaming and gambling, in casinos and on-line. Kevin Washburn has created a teaching vehicle that sparks students interest and prompts them to apply a range of legal concepts to current and real-world issues. Illuminating issues of criminal law, federalism, regulation, due process, and contracts, Gaming and Gambling Law features: the expertise of Kevin Washburn in field and classroom key issues and policy questions that arise in both legal and illegal gambling up-to-date coverage of the fast-growing phenomenon of on-line gamgambling a comparative law and policy perspective looks at the different regulatory models that govern legalized gambling and highlights key differences For a thoroughly engaging class experience with a high pay off in learning, Gaming and Gambling Law is a sure bet. A great draw for second and third-year law students, this concise coursebook engages students in the law, policy, and regulatory practices that surround an iconic industry.

Critical Companion to Herman Melville examines the life and work of a writer who spent much of his career in obscurity.

David Grazian’s riveting tour of downtown Philadelphia and its newly bustling nightlife scene reveals the city as an urban playground where everyone dabbles in games of chance and perpetrates elaborate cons. Entertainment in the city has evolved into a professional industry replete with set designers, stage directors, and method actors whose dazzling illusions tempt even the shrewdest of customers. As entertaining and illuminating as the confessional stories it recounts, On the Make is a fascinating exposé of the smoke and mirrors employed in the city at night.

This book makes several claims which ought to be stated at the outset: that Herman Melville is a recorder and interpreter of American society whose work is comparable to that of the great nineteenth-century European realists; that there was crisis of bourgeois society at midcentury on both continents, but that in America it entered politics by way of slavery and race rather than class; that the crisis called into question the ideal realm of liberal political freedom, and also that Melville was particularly sensitive to the American crisis because of the political importance of his clan and the political history of his family

Several encyclopedias overview the contemporary system of criminal justice in America, but full understanding of current social problems and contemporary strategies to deal with them can come only with clear appreciation of the historical underpinnings of those problems. Thus, this five-volume work surveys the history and philosophy of crime, punishment, and criminal justice institutions in America from colonial times to the present. It covers the whole of the criminal justice system, from crimes, law enforcement and policing, to courts, corrections and human services. Among other things, this encyclopedia: explicates philosophical foundations underpinning our system of justice; charts changing patterns in criminal activity and subsequent effects on legal responses; identifies major periods in the development of our system of criminal justice; and explores in the first four volumes - supplemented by a fifth volume containing annotated primary documents - evolving debates and conflicts on how best to address issues of crime and punishment. Its signed entries in the first four volumes--supplemented by a fifth volume containing annotated primary documents--provide the historical context for students to better understand contemporary criminological debates and the contemporary shape of the U.S. system of law and justice.