Selling Hitler

The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century

Edward Dolnick · 384 pages

Octopus: Sam Israel, the Secret Market, and Wall Street's Wildest Con

Guy Lawson · 368 pages

Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art

Laney Salisbury, Aly Sujo · 339 pages

A tautly paced investigation of one the 20th century's most audacious art frauds, which generated hundreds of forgeries—many of them still hanging in prominent museums and private collections todayProvenance is the extraordinary narrative of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate deceptions in art history. Investigative reporters Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo brilliantly recount the tale of a g

The Floor of Heaven: A True Tale of the Last Frontier & the Yukon Gold Rush

Howard Blum · 420 pages

Using primary source materials from three individuals around whom the narrative revolves, best-selling author Blum tells a story of the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush.

The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine

Benjamin Wallace · 336 pages

It was the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold. In 1985, a 1787 bottle of Cha^teau Lafite Bordeaux--one of a cache unearthed in a bricked-up Paris cellar and supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson--sold at auction for $156,000. The discoverer of the bottle was pop-band manager turned wine collector Hardy Rodenstock, who had a knack for finding extremely old and exquisite wines. But rumors soon a

Empire of Deception: The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation

Dean Jobb · 336 pages

"It was a time of unregulated madness. And nowhere was it madder than in Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties. Speakeasies thrived, gang war shootings announced Al Capone's rise to underworld domination, Chicago's corrupt political leaders fraternized with gangsters, and yellow journalism only contributed to the excesses. The frenzy of stock market gambling was rampant. Enter a slick, smoot

Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil

Tom Mueller · 238 pages

For millennia, fresh olive oil has been one of life's necessities, not just as food but also as medicine, a beauty aid, and a vital element of religious ritual. Today's researchers are continuing to confirm the remarkable, life giving properties of true extra-virgin, and "extra-virgin Italian" has become the highest standard of quality. But what if this symbol of purity has become deeply corrupt?

God's Bankers: A History of Money and Power at the Vatican

Gerald Posner · 742 pages

From a master chronicler of legal and financial misconduct, a magnificent investigation nine years in the making, this book traces the political intrigue and inner workings of the Catholic Church. Decidedly not about faith, belief in God, or religious doctrine, this book is about the church's accumulation of wealth and its byzantine entanglements with financial markets across the world. Told throu

Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend

Mitchell Zuckoff · 440 pages

You've heard of the scheme. Now comes the man behind it. In Mitchell Zuckoff's exhilarating book, the first nonfiction account of Charles Ponzi, we meet the charismatic rogue who launched the most famous and extraordinary scam in the annals of American finance.It was a time when anything seemed possible--instant wealth, glittering fame, fabulous luxury--and for a run of magical weeks in the spring

Whipping Boy: The Forty-Year Search for My Twelve-Year-Old Bully

Allen Kurzweil · 305 pages

"From the acclaimed author of A CASE OF CURIOSITIES, Allen Kurzweil's stranger-than-fiction "investigative memoir", detailing his 40-year-search for his boarding school bully who tied him up at the age of twelve and whipped him to the soundtrack of Jesus Christ Superstar, and who went on to lead a mad-cap life of international crime and financial fraud"--

All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis

Bethany McLean, Joe Nocera · 389 pages

According to the authors, both business journalists, no one has put all the pieces of the financial crisis together. This title explores the motivations of everyone from CEOs and politicians to anonymous lenders, borrowers and Wall Street traders. It goes back more than twenty years to reveal, how Wall Street, the mortgage industry, and the government conspired to change the way Americans bought t

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor

Mark Seal · 323 pages

A probing and cinematic exploration of an audacious impostor, Christian Gerhartsreiter, and his "talented Mr. Ripley" story as Clark Rockefeller. The unbelievable thirty-year run of a shape-shifting con man. Clark Rockefeller's story is a strange twist on the classic American success story of the self-made man--because Clark Rockefeller was totally made up. Born in a small village in Germany, Chr

The Woman Who Wasn't There: The True Story of an Incredible Deception

Robin Gaby Fisher, Angelo J. Guglielmo Jr. · 304 pages

Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal

Ben Macintyre · 384 pages

Eddie Chapman was a charming criminal, a con man, and a philanderer. He was also one of the most remarkable double agents Britain has ever produced. Inside the traitor was a man of loyalty; inside the villain was a hero. The problem for Chapman, his spymasters, and his lovers was to know where one persona ended and the other began.In 1941, after training as a German spy in occupied France, Chapman

Bringing Down The House

Ben Mezrich · 272 pages

Recounts the story of how a notorious gang of MIT blackjack savants devised and received backing for a system for winning at the world's most sophisticated casinos, an endeavor that earned them more than three million dollars.

The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York

Matthew Goodman · 372 pages

A study of a nineteenth-century journalistic hoax describes how a series of articles appearing in the "New York Sun" in 1835 purported to reveal lunar discoveries made by a noted British astronomer concerning life on the moon.

The Lampshade: A Holocaust Detective Story from Buchenwald to New Orleans

Mark Jacobson · 362 pages

IBM and the Holocaust

Edwin Black · 528 pages

IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany -- beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing throughout World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s

The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time

Maria Konnikova · 340 pages

Explores the psyches, motives, and methods of con artists to reveal why they are consistently successful, identifying common hallmarks of cons to share additional insights into the relationship between artists and victims.

Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade

Walter Kirn · 272 pages

In the summer of 1998, Walter Kirn - then a young novelist struggling with fatherhood and a dissolving marriage - set out on a peculiar, fateful errand: to personally deliver a crippled hunting dog from an animal shelter in Montana to the New York apartment of one Clark Rockefeller, a secretive young banker and art collector. Thus began a fifteen-year relationship that drew Kirn deep into the fun-

Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941

William L. Shirer · 605 pages

Essential Historic Document. This is a most important historic document as it is the only known diary written by a professional journalist while on assignment in nazi Germany from 1933 to 1941. Prior to this, Bill Shirer was on assignment in Paris. There is no other Book I know that provides a better description of Germany's transformation from an essentially western democratic nation to a naz

The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime that Scandalized a City and Sparked the Tabloid Wars

Paul Collins · 325 pages

On Long Island, a farmer finds a duck pond turned red with blood. On the Lower East Side, two boys playing at a pier discover a floating human torso wrapped tightly in oilcloth. Blueberry pickers near Harlem stumble upon neatly severed limbs in an overgrown ditch. Clues to a horrifying crime are turning up all over New York, but the police are baffled: There are no witnesses, no motives, no suspec

The Powers That Be

David Halberstam · 771 pages

David Halberstam's new book is an extraordinary achievement. It chronicles the stunning rise in power and influence of America's communications empires. It opens our eyes to the domination of government by the media. It takes us behind the scenes and shows us the new shapes of power in America today. It brings us close to the men and women who developed and wielded that power, and wield it now. -

The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation

Rosemary Sullivan · 400 pages