Selling Hitler

by Robert Harris

Chronicles the story of the creation, manufacture, and sale of the fraudulent "Hitler Diaries," a con game that successfully fooled leading historians and publishers because of their obsession with the Nazi mystique

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Germany, True Crime, World War II, Audiobook, Biography

402 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

ROBERT HARRIS is the author of nine best-selling novels: Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, Imperium, The Ghost Writer, Conspirata, The Fear Index, and An Officer and a Spy. Several of his books have been adapted to film, most recently The Ghost Writer, directed by Roman Polanski. His work has been translated into thirty-seven languages. He lives in the village of Kintbury, England, with his wife, Gill Hornby.

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant non-fiction book about the biggest press scandal of the 20th century. You'll read in extremely compelling chapters how Gerd Heidemann, a Stern journalist, gradually sinks deeper and deeper into the Nazi swamp leading to his final downfall. It starts with collecting money for restoring Herman Goering's former yacht Karin II and end with the purchasing and later on publishing of obscure diaries allegedly written by Hitler himself. What a story with an incredible amount of money involved. This is better than any Bond because it's all true. If you really want to understand what happened then and why you'll have to pick up that well written book. The author did an excellent research here and gives an extremely convincing picture of the scam and all the characters involved. You'll also get incredible insight into the forger's mind (Konrad Kujau so his name). Outstanding and breath taking tale based on an absolutely true story. Highly recommended!

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books you have to read to believe - no Wikipedia entry can do the topic justice. The levels of stupidity, greed, gullibility, and incompetence involved are astonishing.

The story begins with the convergence of two people in the late 1970s: Konrad Kujau, a small-time but highly industrious crook who had established a cottage industry in the fabrication of Nazi documents and Hitler paintings, and Gerd Heidemann, an unscrupulous, Nazi-obsessed (not in the good way) writer at Stern magazine. It is a story of supply and demand. The forged Hitler diaries, of which there would eventually be about sixty volumes, didn't come into existence until Heidemann established contact with Kujau. Heidemann believed the diaries were real, and convinced superiors at Stern to buy the rights to them. Stern, its eyes filled with Deutschmark signs, began to buy the diaries. Once committed to the purchase, as well as to extreme secrecy in order that they not be scooped on the story, there was no turning back, and the proper skepticism that should have accompanied such an endeavor never developed. Stern was deeply, and in their opinion irrevocably, invested in the necessity of the diaries being real. Due to the extreme secrecy they practiced, over a period of years, they never had the diaries examined thoroughly by top German historians (Hugh Trevor-Roper, the expert they used, had written one book on Hitler's final days but was not an expert on the Third Reich), never had a complete forensic analysis done, and never did the detective work that would have proved the documents were faked. Repeatedly pressed to reveal the source of the diaries, Heidemann kept throwing up roadblocks: the source was East German and his life would be in danger if his name were known, etc. Moreover, Heidemann skimmed off a large percentage of the payments from Stern that were supposed to be going to the owner of the diaries (the forger). His lifestyle became ever more lavish, yet no one at Stern demanded a proper accounting. They just kept giving him more and more money. And more and more diaries kept appearing, and Heidemann's standard of living kept rising.

In the end, after the proper forensic tests had been done (which was after Stern had begun to publish the diaries), the paper, ink, glue, and other materials in the volumes were found to be of postwar vintage. Moreover, the forger had copied most of the diary entries verbatim from a chronology of Hitler's schedule compiled by Max Domarus, a German historian, in 1962. Domarus had made a small number of errors, such as stating that a certain meeting took place in 1933 rather than 1932, and these errors were reproduced in the forgery.

If only Stern had listened to Hitler's associates who were still living. They insisted that he hadn't had the time to keep a diary. He ate dinner at 3 a.m. and then went straight to bed. He had also suffered an injury to his writing arm in the assassination attempt of 1944 and would have had to dictate any diary entries, yet they were all handwritten.

It was interesting how certain details contributed to the air of authenticity that certain of the duped experts found. The fact that there were sixty volumes, and the fact that the diary entries were overall so completely banal and non-juicy, convinced Hugh Trevor-Roper and others that they must be real.

The book reproduces a WWI-era poem supposedly written by Hitler. (It's not clear if the poem is or is not authentic.)

"An Idyll in the War"

As the medical orderly Gottlieb Krause heard as he came through Arras,
The sudden dull cry of a woman from the closest house:
I must help! was his thought, even a German in the field remains helpful,
And a newborn baby Frenchman arrived in the world with Gottlieb Krause's help.

And with his typical great care he looked after the child,
Washed it, cared for it, to show we're not barbarians
And held the babe with pleasure in front of his comrades;
This little worm knows nothing of Iswolski and Delcassé's intrigues!

Milk was rare and needed in a hurry; in the meadow grazed a cow,
And two soldiers from the next troop commandeered her at once,
And milked her! It ran in spurts and in rich amounts,
Shrapnel fell close by but didn't stop the work.

Right afterwards, he gave the bottle to the child he had delivered,
And pulled two zwieback out of his pocket for the mother
An idyll proving once again the German's noble creed,
If the Limeys haven't destroyed it, the house is still there.

[MacWithBooksonMountains Marcus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Harris provides an informative, exciting and at times even hilarious account of the fake Hitler Diary published 1983 in the Stern magazine. He shows us in detail the comedy of errors that led a great many people involved in the project astray. There are interviews with many interesting people of international standing such as Hitler historians Trevor Roper, David Irving and even comments from SS General Mohnke. Harris’ book really puts life into the Stern Hitler Diary disaster and does teach me much about the difficulties of document authentication, even if as it was the case with the Hitler diaries, the forgery was not at all as professional as it is generally assumed. The whole thing reminded me a bit on the forger being a kind of pied piper, with people happily, merrily following after him, some wanting desperately to believe, some wanting desperately make a buck, forgery or not no matter.

[David Lowther · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much of this book was fascinating. Unfortunately there was too much of it. The author, a renowned novelist, whose books tackle genres from Ancient Rome to the frightening future where information technology begins to take control Hal like, have always been thoroughly researched and this frequently gives them credibility. In Selling Hitler Harris has followed a similar path and no one could doubt that theses events of thirty four years ago unfolded exactly as he tells us in Selling Hitler.

What I found a little dull was the lead up to the great scandal when The Sunday Times, Stern and others proclaimed that they were publishing extracts from diaries kept by Hitler. These turned out to be fakes and reputations suffered and some media outlets became laughing stocks. All of this is told very well but how this all came about was complex and sometimes repetitive.

The book was written in 1986 which means that there is no follow up in terms of what happened to the main players. I shall do my own research! The whole book and the affair left me pretty much open mouthed and the latter parts of the book have the pace of a thriller. However, as a standard text on one of history's biggest frauds, Selling Hitler is a valuable document.

David Lowther. Author of The Blue Pencil,Two Families at War, Liberating Belsen and The Summer of '39.

[Maine Colonial · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember the big splash back in the 80s when the German magazine Stern announced that it had unearthed Hitler’s diaries and would be publishing them. But no sooner had they announced it than German government forensic examiners pronounced that the whole set of many volumes was a forgery, and not a very impressive one. Not only did Stern have egg on its face, but also other experts who had examined the diaries and pronounced them legitimate, including renowned historian, Hugh Trevor-Roper.

Novelist Robert Harris turns his writing skills to nonfiction to tell the tale. Starting around the 1970s, a boom market developed in Nazi memorabilia. When that happens, not surprisingly forgers and fakers get to work. A Stern journalist became fascinated by the world of Nazi memorabilia, and becomes a collector himself. To one forger, the journalist was an obvious mark. And so, a legend was born of the last days of the Third Reich, of a plane crashing with crates of Hitler’s diaries, of an East German former Nazi who had the volumes and had to ask the journalist to sneak them out, one by one (as the forger madly wrote new volumes).

The journalist convinces the magazine that this is gold, but he needs loads more money to pay off the East German—though in fact he pockets three quarters of the money, buying a huge apartment, fancy cars and more Nazi memorabilia, real and fake. Incredibly, the magazine buys the journalist’s tales about the source of the diaries and that he can’t reveal the man’s identity because of the risk to his life. More incredibly, various so-called experts are taken in by the forgeries.

Stern negotiates English-language rights with Rupert Murdoch’s Sunday Times and Newsweek, though it so botches negotiations that it ends up with a price far below what it could have had. Excitement if building to a fever pitch. Then, just as the diaries are about to be serialized to the world, West Germany’s Bundesarchiv shatters the whole illusion.

This is a fascinating story, but I think it adds something to the reading that we are now living in an era of unparalleled gullibility. People believe what they want to believe, then and now, and there are always grifters and bad actors willing to sell fakery for their own gain and purposes.

[Iain · Rating 5 out of 5]

A difficult one to give 5 stars to. Well written and compelling but leaves you with a bad taste of despair that such a story could unfold. Populated by a string of repellent right wing greedy figures desperate to cash in on the world's fascination with Hitler and the Nazis, the real villains, even worse than them are the stupid and gullible 'journalists' taken in by the while fraud in order to make money. Its no surprise to find a younger Rupert Murdoch embroiled in this mess, and 40 years on, the state of the media and press can draw a straight line from this sort of gutter tabloid behaviour. The solace that everyone of these people comes across as a complete idiot is tempered by the fact that these sort of people are now running countries and global corporations and the exact same scandal would and could happen again. Fascinating and depressing and irritating in equal measure.

[Gerald Sinstadt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps the author, who knows how to spin a good yarn, is the only one whose reputation is enhanced by Selling Hitler. Otherwise, on the one hand are the con men who market the faked Nazi memorabilia; on the other are those who fell for it all to the extent that they needed to make it true even after they began to suspect it wasn't. As a parable to illustrate the foibles of human nature the book is a classic.

The catalysts are a German journalist obsessed with collecting Nazi souvenirs, and a small-time forger of luncheon vouchers who sees a niche market develop into a career. The supporting cast of newspaper moguls and editors, journalists, professors, experts and analysts are unified by gullibility. Like Beckett's Godot, Martin Bormann promises to appear but somehow never does. As in a Faydeau farce, the the first lie provides the foundation from which one improbability becomes the source of another: so-called specimens of Hitler's handwriting are authenticated because they are compared with other examples of the same forger's work.

Robert Harris has done his homework well and presents it in all its most hilarious detail

[Ignacio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesante reconstrucción del escándalo que rodeó la compra y publicación del pretendido diario de Aldolf Hitler en 1983, un pufo que dejó muy tocada la credibilidad de la revista alemana Stern. Leído hoy, casi 40 años más tarde, permite hacerse una idea de la sombra del nazismo sobre la Alemania contemporánea, un tema generalmente desconocido y que invita a ver de una manera menos singular la relación de España con su pasado fascista. Además muestra un caso práctico de los agujeros en que se mete el periodismo cuando prioriza criterios empresariales. Es ilustrativa la participación de Rupert Murdoch para entender de dónde viene la ruina social que ha alentado allí por donde ha controlado medios.

[Stefan Mitev · Rating 4 out of 5]

Книгата "Да продадеш Хитлер" на Робърт Харис описва най-голямата измама в историята на издателския бизнес.

В началото на осемдесетте години на миналия век журналист в Западна Германия (ФРГ) научава за съществуването на неизвестни дотогава дневници, писани от Хитлер. Логично, прави всичко възможно да се сдобие с тях. Заедно с издателството Щерн плащат милиони марки в продължение на няколко години, за да закупи всички документи, които уж се пренасят като контрабанда от ГДР. Проблемът е, че ценните книги са зле направен фалшификат. Но истината се разбира прекалено късно. Финансовите загуби са огромни, а репутацията на журналистите е разбита. История за суета и измама.

Книгата прекрасно илюстрира как човешката алчност и желание за слава води до неочаквани неприятности. А мошеници винаги е имало и те знаят как да се възползват от слабостите на хората. В първоначалните експертизи документите са обявени за истински. Едва след анализ на хартията се установява, че всичко е писано много след края на войната. Сделките с медийни магнати като Рупърт Мърдок пропадат. Издателството разбира, че е измамено.

Сега не може да си представим свят, в който информацията е трудно достъпна. Интернет ни прави свободни. Но през осемдесетте години е било изключително трудно да се направи проверка за автентичност и плагиатство. Дейност, която сега ще ни отнеме няколко секунди. Прочетете книгата, за да не повторите грешките на наивните и алчни журналисти, чиито мечти са разбити буквално дни преди жадуваната световна слава.

И ако досега не сте разбрали историята е абсолютна истина, а не художествено произведение.

Книгата е преведена и на български език.

[Chrissie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Normally, the name in the title of this book would have made me pass quickly over it, but I read a review, and saw that it was written by Robert Harris, and I went straight in! Well, what a tale this is! It is the story of a low level forger who duped several high level newspaper proprietors into buying (at great expense) what they believed to be Hitler's personal diaries, which it was alleged had only come to light years after Hitler's suicide. It's an incredible story, and I learned about the huge market for Nazi memorabilia unfortunately. David Rintoul is an outstanding narrator.

[Wayne]

"Impossible to stop reading" Observer.

"A very funny story...very well told" Norman Stone, Times Literary Supplement.

These exact and tantalising front and backcover reviews
read in the book section of our local "Second-Hand Rose" type shop
had me decide to purchase it,THE book,immediately.
To read about Mr. Hitler at one remove would also be a pleasure
rather than a trauma.

And so it all has proved:

VERY amusing; UNputdownable; photos of the leading players;
and brilliant portraits of Human Nature at some of it's weakest and most self-deluding
moments...these simultaneously unsettling and humorous.
AND it's all well told, a cast of thousands seemingly, as yet more and more people get aboard,
in what promised to be the BIGGEST discovery, not as it eventuated the BIGGEST scam and self-delusional, publishing event in History.
The diaries themselves, each short volume forged in a matter of hours,
were mainly lists of appointments, and EXTREMELY boring.
But the recipients were never able to READ them because they were written in a dated Germanic script.Only the MOST deluded and fanatical Nazi Collector in the cast was able to do this.
Error, chance, deception,greed,self-delusion and more
just piling one more onto another in the growing pile
that will burst the dam to release Exposure and Truth.
Galloping and detailed, a roller coaster ride of a read,
just the thing to distract you from
...something as long-winded and poorly edited as...lets say, Marcel Proust !!!!

[Ivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Storia di una "sola"

Crediamo a ciò cui vogliamo credere, vediamo quello che vogliamo vedere, a dispetto dell'evidenza. Ciarlatani, imbroglioni al lavoro, ma non solo; in questo caso un astuto e abile falsario che nel 1983 spillò un bel po' di marchi (10 milioni) alla rivista Stern e prese per il naso Trevor-Roper, storico ed esperto del nazismo. Un qualche cosa di simile è successo a casa nostra nel 2007 con i falsi diari di Mussolini.
Di piacevole lettura, Harris ci regala anche momenti di quasi suspence.

[Jeremy Cox · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slow. More detail about more people's folly than you ever wanted to know. I think I would have enjoyed a version 1/3 of the length much more.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fabulous depiction of what happens when greed for money and fame combined with potential opportunity can trample over the wisest and seemingly clear-headed minds. Not many characters here come out of it well - forgers, crooked and desperate journalists, media moguls looking for the scoop or incompetent historians. It should have been obvious that Hitler’s temperament was not diary-orientated and that the entries were borrowed secondhand from other sources, including the same factual errors. Throw in the inconsistency with the handwriting and you wonder how anyone would entertain these as real. As with all this author’s work, I was taught and entertained at the same time.

[Ciaran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gerd Heidemann really got lost in the sauce on this one. Konrad Kujau did nothing wrong and was just being a silly little guy.

[Darcy Small · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fascinating story but told with too many words for my liking, including big ones: septuagenarian, loquacious, adroitly, mendacity, pilloried, parsimony, peripatetic, vociferous, perfidy.

[Matthew Pritchard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the story of the infamous Hitler Diaries fiasco in the early '80s, one of the largest publishing frauds in on record.

The series of events is explained by Harris in clear, crisp prose, and portrays a mixture of greed, hubris, political chicanery, and blatant stupidity, as the protagonists - employees of the German magazine, Stern, and The Sunday Times mainly; with cameos from Rupert Murdoch; Holocaust denier, David Irving; and various ex-Nazis from Hitler's inner circle - wheel, deal, and wheedle to get their hands on dozens of incompetently forged diaries, spending millions in the process.

What really comes out of the book, though, is a sense of the insidious fascination the world still has with Hitler, a fascination so powerful that it caused many experienced journalists and historians to throw caution to the wind in their desire to learn the inner workings of Hitler's mind.

My only gripe is that Harris perhaps went into too much detail in certain sections - the same story could have been told just as effectively with far fewer words. That said, it is still a cracking read.

[Claire Webster · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the first non-fiction Robert Harris book I had read, but I found it as instantly gripping and readable as any of his fiction. Actually, of course, it is truth of the 'stranger than fiction' kind -- a jaw-dropping tale of bold forgery, hero-worship and self-delusion -- which perfectly suits his style. The cast of fantasists, fanatics, the greedy, the lazy and the egotistical could come straight from a thriller and the twists, turns and near misses of the 'plot' keep the reader enthralled all the way to the sorry denouement.

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book details the hype surrounding the 'discovery' of Hitler's diaries during the mid-80s--and the backpeddling when they were revealed to be fraudulent. Involved were such publications as Stern, The Times of London and Newsweek; such individuals as Hugh Trevor-Roper, David Irving and Rupert Murdoch. Most interesting, however, are the glimpses one gets of the then still-living associates of Adolf Hitler and their credulous admirers.

[Lili Kyurkchiyska · Rating 5 out of 5]

Книгата ми даде богат материал за размисъл - относно работата на журналиста, професионализма на учените и значението на репутация. Въпреки че много се забавлявах по време на прочита й, в действителност не ми е смешно. Тази история доказва колко см лековерни и до каква степен забравяме стойността на съмнението.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think one of the signs of a good factual book is it introduces you to things historically you didn't know which during or after the book you check out..this book did that..
To be clear I did know about the diary hoax it was just other things and people on the parameter of it that I didn't really have an awareness of that this book switched me onto..that's I think where good factual stuff sometimes (for me) has the edge over much fiction.
This book reads well and is compelling some of the propagators of the hoax get their desserts some end up doing rather well out of it ..it however was interesting to see how greed blinded news agencies to the point that they accepted a errant fraud as fact..in fact so much so I don't really think there's a sole person in this I have much sympathy for as reputations rise and fall.
Decent book.

[Robert Ronsson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember the furore when The Times carried the Hitler Diary scoop and only days later had to retract everything when they were found to be fakes. What I didn't understand then was that any competent investigation of the 'diaries' would have revealed the truth very quickly.
This book is very good at highlighting the cock-up (rather than conspiracy) aspects of the story and it was gratifying to see Harris take a sideswipe at the slime ball David Irving over his late decision, based on no evidence whatsoever, to support the diaries solely because it would earn him more interview fees.
The laugh-out-loud moments were few and far between but this was an informative, satisfying read told at a pace that never flagged because of over exposition.

[Richard Bartholomew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a compelling narrative and a psychologically astute study of one of the world’s most notorious literary frauds: a collection of 61 notebooks that were purported to be the personal diaries of Adolf Hitler. The volumes were acquired piecemeal and with great secrecy over several years by Gerd Heidemann, a reporter at Stern magazine whose obsession with old Nazis and Nazi memorabilia had been a source of vexation to his immediate superiors until he persuaded managers at Gruner and Jahr, Stern’s publisher, that a scoop of unprecedented historical significance and journalistic sensation lay within their grasp. Heidemann was authorised to make large unsupervised cash payments to a mysterious informant, who provided a steady trickle of material that was reverently squirrelled away in a Zurich bank vault until such time as the magazine was ready to publish and syndicate the story of its remarkable discovery.

Heidemann’s source was a Stuttgart antiques dealer named “Herr Fischer” – the alias of one Konrad Kujau. According to Kujau, the books were part of a cache that had been rescued by villagers from the wreckage of a plane transporting important documents from Hitler’s bunker at the end of the war. By the late 1970s, the notebooks were in the possession of several sources in East Germany, who were prepared to smuggle them out via Kujau at great personal risk to themselves.

The need for secrecy was fatal for Stern – only very limited tests were done on the “diaries”, including handwriting comparison with other Hitler documents that had also been provided by Kujau. There was also only superficial engagement with the text itself, which was written in a difficult Gothic script – thus no-one noticed that Hitler’s notes bore a remarkable similarly with a chronicle of Hitler’s speeches and proclamations compiled by Max Domarus in the 1960s, and even incorporated Domarus’s errors.

The truth, which was that the whole lot had been forged by Kujau, did not come out until after Stern had publicly staked its reputation on the authenticity of the diaries– by which time Newsweek and the Sunday Times had also been sucked into the mire following complex syndication talks (in which Stern tried to play the two bidders off against each other, only to see them join forces). The eminent historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, who had previously deconstructed the works of the fraudulent Orientalist Edmund Backhouse (reviewed here), declared his confidence in the diaries for the Sunday Times; however, within a few hours of writing an article on the subject for the paper’s sister title he had had second thoughts, which were contemptuously dismissed as irrelevant by Rupert Murdoch (an instance of the decline of the Sunday Times noted by Nick Davies in Flat Earth News, reviewed here). David Irving apparently made £15,000 in media commentary denouncing the diaries as fakes, before opportunistically himself changing his mind the other way just before the whole farrago came crashing down. Irving had some inside information on the matter, having acquired forgeries himself from the source who had introduced Heidemann to Kujau.

It transpired that Kujau received about a quarter of the money entrusted to Heidemann, whose sudden opulence had already aroused suspicion. However, although Heidemann was crooked, he was also a fantasist who really believed in his scoop; and although he sought out personal links to the Third Reich (over-extending himself by purchasing Hermann Göring's old yacht, dating Göring's daughter, and taking a honeymoon in Bolivia, where he sought out Klaus Barbie), it seems that this was more a fascination with power than a strong identification with Nazi ideology. He wasn’t the only one – in reference to two other men caught up in Kujau’s frauds, Harris writes:

Hitler seems to hold a special interest for businessmen, particularly when… they are self-made men. Hitler’s career represented the most extreme, as well as the most monstrous, example of what an individual can do if he dedicates himself to the exertion of his will… The years of Hitler’s “Triumph of the Will” coincided with the years when the philosophy of self-help was at its height… With his studied mannerisms, his cultivated habit of staring into people’s eyes, his hunger to read manuals and absorb technical data, Hitler was self-help run riot.

It does not appear that Heidemann was racially prejudiced – he also had an interest in Idi Amin, and boasted that he owned a pair of underpants that previously belonged to the Ugandan dictator.

One aspect of the diaries that so impressed Trevor-Roper was the sheer bulk of the material – ironically, a good example of the “Big Lie” philosophy of Nazi propaganda. Having invested so much money, resources and reputational capital in the diaries, Stern and the Sunday Times were hardly incentivised to debunk their story – another psychological mechanism that favours con-artists and bad actors whether dealing with the media or with private individuals. Tellingly, speculation arose that this was a conspiracy hatched in East Germany at the highest levels, rather than a squalid and humiliating fraud that made a mockery of academic expertise and journalistic diligence. Heidemann apparently retained his belief in the diaries even after Kujau gleefully revealed his technique once the jig was up and happily obliged by continuing to produce fake Hitler autographs from his prison cell.

[Suzie Dietrich · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was fascinated right from the start at the stupidity and incompetency of the people involved in this whole fiasco. Both academics and so-called forensic experts were so quick to believe the Hitler diaries were genuine. They were motivated by greed and arrogance and still we don’t know where all the incredible amounts of money spent to secure publication of these extracts of AH’s rather dull reports went. I was even more staggered at the short sentences the main protagonists received at the ensuing trial. Riveting read - thank you Robert Harris. Your ability to recreate a certain time in history is second to none.

[Angus McKeogh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just okay. The subject matter and the story should’ve been gripping. Discovery of diaries written by Adolf Hitler. The story of their publication. The story of their forgery. One of the statements about how the forgeries should’ve been immediately known was that they were so dull and banal. And that’s unfortunately exactly how this book devolved. It became so dull and banal after starting out with a flourish of interest. Collectively just okay.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Couldn’t make it up! Harris is a brilliant reporter and tells this tale so well. An old one but still a great story and a great read. Venality, ego and hubris. Would be interesting to know what happened with the protagonists in the longer term.

[Mark Loughridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unbelievable tale of greed, comic forgery, and bare faced cheek.

[Francis Pellow · Rating 5 out of 5]

almost unbelievable tale of greed and stupidity. Harris shows his writing genius is this early non-fiction book.

[Vasil Kolev · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was interesting, and how overblown the whole thing became was really interesting. You could call it "comedy of incompetence/greed"....

[Nathan Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely insane story of idiots, grifters and complete bastards.