There's nothing like a good scam. I love scams in books and movies -- Ocean's Eleven, Catch Me If You Can, The Sting. I suspect I'd be a lot less charmed if I were to encounter one in real life though. I feel simultaneously prepared for scams and resigned to being a dupe after reading Maria Konnikova's The Confidence Game. She describes different types of scams and cons with plenty of examples. People who have impersonated others, grifters, shell game artists, they're all here, and it's fascinat...

I really enjoyed reading the stories, background, and perspectives of these cons. I feel that by reading this, I'm better equipped to spot a scam and avoid being taken. Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

“We aren’t robbers, you and I. To rob a fool, you don’t need knives: Just flatter him, tell him sweet lies, And he is yours for life. ”  Before i start reviewing this book i want you to understand what doesn the word "con man" mean ! A man who cheats or tricks someone by gaining their trust and persuading them to believe something that is not true. It’s all about manipulating someone’s beliefs, Con artists are evil human beings, with malicious intentions and no conscience sounds familiar ? oh ye...

This book should be a hit with people who have a passing interest in cons and psychology, but I was hoping for something a little more focused. The writing constantly switches back and forth from super dense and breezily anecdotal, which tired me out a lot by the halfway point. 2 stars for the writing, and one extra for the few interesting takeaways.

Part of the problem here, I realize, is that I was hoping this would be a different book. I wanted a catalogue of classic confidence games, for two reasons: 1. Future writing research. 2. I wanted a final, definitive answer on whether the “biggest Ella Fitzgerald ever” from Ocean’s 11 is a real game. I did not get what I was hoping for.But even discounting that: this is a stodgy and depressing read. The writing is fine, but the story portions are, for obvious reasons, both sad and repetitive. Pe...

I was drawn to this book because I recently came thisclose to buying into a multi-level marketing scheme and, as a result, felt compelled to learn more about why we are all susceptible to manipulation and persuasion by con artists. I thought Maria Konnikova's explanations of the psychology and methods of cons/scams were engaging and well-researched. I particularly enjoyed the detailed true stories of cons, both recent and historic, and Konnikova's ability to link her findings to general statemen...

This book is a thorough and absolutely fascinating exploration of human psychology and the traits we all harbor (to some degree) that make us vulnerable to exploitation and trickery. It explores not only the foibles con artists exploit to get us to trust them (as well as to take from us what they want, once that trust is earned), but also the powerful impulse we have to disbelieve that we could have been duped. Psychological research (if not intuition) shows that it's far easier to reaffirm the

The text is a bit basic, but it is still an interesting read.Overall the book informs us many of the basic stuff, i.e. the usual mind-traps that we always fall into, but I think this book is rather educational.

I enjoyed thus far far less than I did the poker book. Part of it was that some of the research shared was identical (hot hand fallacy, probability of a coin flip, a few others), part of it was that I’d heard several of these con stories before (Glafira Rosales’ con is a Netflix documentary I’d already watched, for instance). I also found a lot of these studies no more insightful than your typical detective show about why con men are successful. It was good to see there was science behind it, I

(1 1/2). This book is a good news, bad news proposition. The chapters are mostly set up with a case study describing the kind of con or deception that it is about. Those recounts are very interesting and seem very contemporary, regardless of when they occurred. The rest of each chapter then goes into the psychology of why we (humans) react in the manner that we do and why we are duped. Like in many business and other non-fiction books (Tom Friedman for example), that part gets very repetitive an...

Why is the 'oldest profession in the world' the con-man? Why do perfectly educated and intelligent people fall for cons that are immediately obvious to onlookers? And how did people like Bernie Madoff lure hordes of people? Maria Konnivova dives deep into the art of the con: the steps that lead up to it, and those aspects of human psychology that con-men exploit. Our ability to trust, our circumstances in life, our belief that something exceptional *can* happen to us, our over-exaggerated optimi...

After 30th page, I have no patience to go on. Best it's over.

This is really entertaining, especially the first third of it, but it did kind of start to feel directionless, maybe because it switches directions so much. There are a bunch of interesting stories interspersed with pop psych looks at what behavior and tendencies con artists are targeting, but it all ends up feeling a bit thin eventually.Then there's this, in reference to the many impostors who cropped up over the years pretending to be Anastasia Romanov, "the Russian princess whose body was nev...

This book has a wealth of information about those who con and those who are conned. It’s also easy to understand. But it’s not organized in the reader’s best interest. It’s organized in a way that best suits the author, who has no problem continuously jumping around from century to century, and who can easily remember every con mentioned in the book. That’s a shame, too, because Ms. Konnikova's book could have been a better help to the general public. Although when it comes right down to it, mos...

This is one of those nonfiction books where the information is amazing and so interesting, and the organization of that information is head-scratchingly weird. But overall, it's good stuff!

I wasn't wowed by this book, slow beginning.... uses pseudo science to back up some of its claims and it really doesn't offer any advice in how to avoid getting scammed .. so what was the point .... I read a 300 page book just to be told what I already know , people who want to believe are the ones who get lied to ..... really is this new? ....

When I was in my mid-teens I came home from school one day to find my father reading a letter. He asked me to look at it, and it was a badly typed message full of misspellings that was my first encounter with the Nigerian prince con although I didn’t know it at the time.“What do you think?” he asked.“It’s a scam,” I replied. At that point he actually got irritated with me and started pointing out a bunch of reasons why it could be legitimate. I was beyond shocked that the man who had constantly

Good but... repetitive, and as others have mentioned, oddly organized. Could have been shorter by a third. The research is there--interesting and impressive--but no bibliography or footnotes. An easy, even breezy, read but for the repetition, the constant circling back.

Whenever we read about some con job that nets a sucker or ten, the first thing across our minds is: how could they possibly have fallen for that? It's such an obvious scam! What were they thinking?According to psychologist/author Maria Konnikova, they were thinking the same way we would. In their shoes, we'd have been saps, too.In the 1950s, linguist David Maurer called confidence men the "aristocrats of crime." Unlike most other crimes, the con requires us to become willing participants in our

Maria Konnikova is an expert on con artists. A year or so ago, she did a podcast based on this book called “The Grift,” which is the original name for a Ponzi scheme. She’s also a frequent guest on Mike Pesca’s podcast in a regular feature they call, “Is That Bulls***t?” So I went into this book with a fair bit of familiarity with what she’d say, but I really recommend both the book and the podcast. There’s definitely overlap, but there are also unique stories in each, and let’s face it: there’s...