This review is a decent summary of the book I just finished, written by David Maurer in 1940. In The Big Con, what started out as a linguist's attempt to document the argot of a criminal brotherhood became a sociological study and a document of all the popular "big cons". Somewhere out on the Internet I read how this book had served as the inspiration for The Sting, which I'd seen as a kid, and I had to read it.
Nowadays I seldom finish a book, browsing for the highlights instead. But I finished this one. Let that be a testament.
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