A Century of Swindles Ponzi Schemes, Con Men, and Fraudsters by Railey Jane Savage

There is a small chance I may have overestimated my interest in swindles. Swindling, unlike hoaxing, is more of a purely financial thing and reading about finances (stolen or otherwise) just isn’t all that exciting…unless you’re specifically into that sort of thing.
Then again, there’s something inherently fun about swindling, the same way there’s something inherently fun about cons…for a con is a game, you know, a con game implying it requires at least two players. So many crimes are just about terrible people doing terrible things to perfectly good, perfectly innocent other people, but conning someone is different for it requires at least an unwitting victim’s participation. In other words, a con game or a swindle is a spotlight that showcases the best and brightest in the gullible field. Step right up and buy shares in places that don’t exist, for the men and women featured in this book were trading in the most enticing fictions of their time.
Whether trading on their nonexistent connections to a Carnegie fortune or Francis Drake’s one or going outside of the bounds of material world altogether, there’s a certain creativity at play here, a certain boldness, a certain panache that’s just fun to read about.
There are seven chapters in this book, seven famous swindlers. The eponymous century the author selected is 1850-1950, the place is US. A new country with fresh cash seemingly primed for the taking.
This is something that interests me, so I’ve heard/read about some of these stories and these characters before (I mean, you don’t just forget about someone named Lord Gordon Gordon) but it was still enjoyable to revisit the familiar players and cons and discover some new ones.
I’m not familiar with the author, but she did an excellent job of bringing these swindlers to life, her writing erudite, entertaining and surprisingly (pleasant surprise, that is) literary for a work of nonfiction. There were photos in the book too, which was nice. The publisher provided ARC was of a disappointing quality, though, with tons of formatting quirks and occasional unfinished sentence, which detracted considerably form the reading enjoyment. No idea why publishers think it’s ok to provide a book in this condition. I shall endeavor to remember to stay away from their ARCs in the future.
Otherwise, a pretty infortaining (first time using that portmanteau) book and a reasonably quick read for nonfiction. A nice reminder to check your naiveté’s for there might be someone scheming to take advantage of it out there at this very moment. Thanks Netgalley.