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Reddit mentions of The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man

Sentiment score: 4
Reddit mentions: 7

We found 7 Reddit mentions of The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man. Here are the top ones.

The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man
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    Features:
  • Anchor Books
Specs:
ColorBlack
Height7.95 Inches
Length5.2 Inches
Number of items1
Release dateJuly 1999
Weight0.57540650382 Pounds
Width0.72 Inches

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Found 7 comments on The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man:

u/redditho24602 · 89 pointsr/AskHistorians

If you're generally interested in police corruption in 20th century America, you may want to pick up The Big Con. It's an unusual book --- the author was a professor of linguistics who began studying criminal slang, got to know a bunch of con men, and wrote up a book explaining how these huge operations worked in the late 19th/early 20th century. These con schemes were quite elaborate, with a whole cast of players who helped fool the mark, and often a required a permanent home to function. That meant you needed a "fixer" to bribe the cops and ensure the game didn't get busted. Obviously the book is mostly about the con itself, but the discussion of the fix and how con men found places to operate touches on your interest. (Smaller towns and cities were much easier to fix than a huge place like NYC.)

u/lamentedly · 6 pointsr/betterCallSaul

I don't think you're understanding this. Madoff didn't tell people it was a pyramid scheme. Jimmy either told his marks that they were scamming other people (the watch) or let them try to scam him (the coin, and the watch).

This is a great book about the classic cons. Or you can just watch the movie The Sting, which is built upon the same concept. Classic cons work because the victim thinks he's getting over. No one thought they were getting over on Madoff, they thought they were paying for a service.

u/gte910h · 3 pointsr/rpg

Your perception is a ton of different things welded together with a hardwired steady belief in "THIS IS TRUE".

This is how people black out, misremember events when questioned by an attorney, and fall for convincing lies and believe them to their dying day, even if intelligent.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Con-Story-Confidence/dp/0385495382/ref=pd_sim_b_2 is a good book about a lot of them.

u/Keltik · 2 pointsr/suggestmeabook

Where it all began: The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man by David Maurer

In the 1930s a University of Louisville professor interviewed many veterans of the great confidence games from the first generation of the 20th century. He published his observations in 1940, and his book became an immediate underground classic. It was especially influential in Hollywood, where writers mined it for years as source material -- most notoriously screenwriter David Ward appropriated huge chunks of the book for The Sting (Maurer sued and won a $300K settlement). But The Big Con had already been reworked for years, especially in the TV shows of Roy Huggins (Maverick, Alias Smith and Jones).

u/I_throw_socks_at_cat · 2 pointsr/booksuggestions

I really enjoyed The Big Con, a non-fiction book about large-scale cons in the 1930s and 40s. If you've seen the movie The Sting, it's describing that sort of operation.

You might also like Yellow Kid Weil, an autobiography written by a con man working around that time.

u/duppy · 1 pointr/IAmA

i read an interesting book once called the big con which describes con artists in the beginning of the 20th century. one thing i found fascinating was how they had something like a code of honor, where they only conned people who agreed to help thim gain money by dishonest means. they didn't really prey on the weak or innocent.