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Victor Lustig: The Man Who Conned the World
By (author) Christopher Sandford
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| on special |
normal price: R 649.95
Price: R 616.95
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| book description |
'Fascinating.' - Daily Mail ‘An incredible story’ - Daily Mirror The period after the First World War was a golden age for the confidence man. ‘A new kind of entrepreneur is stirring amongst us,’ The Times wrote in 1919. ‘He is prone to the most detestable tactics, and is a stranger to charity and public spirit. One may nonetheless note his acuity in separating others from their money.’ Enter Victor Lustig (not his real name). An Austro-Hungarian with a dark streak, by the age of sixteen he had learned how to hustle at billiards and lay odds at the local racecourse. By nineteen he had acquired a livid facial scar in an altercation with a jealous husband. That blemish aside, he was a man of athletic good looks, with a taste for larceny and foreign intrigue. He spoke six languages and went under nearly as many aliases in the course of a continent-hopping life that also saw him act as a double (or possibly triple) agent. Along the way, he found time to dupe an impressive variety of banks and hotels on both sides of the Atlantic; to escape from no fewer than three supposedly impregnable prisons; and to swindle Al Capone out of thousands of dollars, while living to tell the tale. Undoubtedly the greatest of his hoaxes was the sale, to a wealthy but gullible Parisian scrap-metal dealer, of the Eiffel Tower in 1925. In a narrative that thrills like a crime caper, best-selling biographer Christopher Sandford draws on newly released documents to tell the whole story of the greatest conman of the twentieth century.
| product details |
Normally shipped |
Publisher | The History Press Ltd
Published date | 25 Jul 2024
Language |
Format | Paperback / softback
Pages | 0
Dimensions | 234 x 156 x 0mm (L x W x H)
Weight | 0g
ISBN | 978-1-8039-9771-1
Readership Age |
BISAC | true crime / general
| other options |
Normally shipped |
Readership Age |
Normal Price | R 1 005.95
Price | R 955.95
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