Great Cons & Con Artists: The Incredible Stories of the Masters of Deceit

by Robin Langley Sommer

A collection of famous cases reveals the truth behind the fake autobiography of billionaire recluse Howard Hughes, the creation of the "Lincoln Love Letters," and the museum-quality "Vermeers" painted by a twentieth-century Dutch artist.

128 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this big coffee table book for a buck at a used bookstore. It's alright, a rambling collection of ancedotes, but only a few stories rise above the mundane.(Van Meeregen's Vermeer frauds revealed when he defended himself against charges of selling priceless masterpieces to the Nazis, and Clifford Irving's Howard Hughes biography). Mostly, this is just a collection of insane lies, and not particularly comprehensive or well-researched.

[Stacy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sounded interesting on the cover, but I didn't particularly enjoy it... My main criticism is that the book went for a vast quantity of stories but at a pretty shallow level, whereas selecting fewer and going into greater depth would have been a lot more interesting. Another annoyance was that the body of the text needed more spacing or subheadings, i.e. to distinguish between additional paragraphs of the same story and new stories... Not recommended!

[Fyodor · Rating 3 out of 5]

How much percentage wise is true in this book?