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A Perfect Swindle, a Cunning Revenge, and a Small History of the Big Con
Knopf
March 2012
On Sale: March 6, 2012
304 pages
ISBN: 0307272486
EAN: 9780307272485
Kindle: B005IQZB3W
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
In 1919, Texas rancher J. Frank Norfleet lost everything he
had in a stock market swindle. He did what many other marks
did—he went home, borrowed more money from his family, and
returned for another round of swindling.
Only after he lost that second fortune did he reclaim
control of his story. Instead of crawling back home in
shame, he vowed to hunt down the five men who had conned
him. Armed with a revolver and a suitcase full of disguises,
Norfleet crisscrossed the country from Texas to Florida to
California to Colorado, posing as a country hick and
allowing himself to be ensnared by confidence men again and
again to gather evidence on his enemies. Within four years,
Frank Norfleet had become nationally famous for his quest to
out-con the con men.
Through Norfleet’s ingenious reverse-swindle, Amy Reading
reveals the mechanics behind the scenes of the big con—a
piece of performance art targeted to the most vulnerable
points of human nature. Reading shows how the big con has
been woven throughout U.S. history. From the colonies to the
railroads and the Chicago Board of Trade, America has always
been a speculative enterprise, and bunco men and bankers
alike have always understood that the common man was
perfectly willing to engage in minor fraud to get a piece of
the expanding stock market—a trait that made him infinitely
gullible.
Amy Reading’s fascinating account of con artistry in America
and Frank Norfleet’s wild caper invites you into the crooked
history of a nation on the hustle, constantly feeding the
hunger and the hope of the mark inside.
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