{"product_id":"9781803997711","title":"Victor Lustig : The Man Who Conned the World by Sandford, Christopher","description":"Paperback \/ softback\u003cbr\u003eEurope\u003cbr\u003e9781803997711\u003cbr\u003eThe period after the First World War was a golden age for the confidence man. ‘A new kind of entrepreneur is stirring amongst us,’ The Times wrote in 1919. ‘He is prone to the most detestable tactics, and is a stranger to charity and public spirit. One may nonetheless note his acuity in separating others from their money.’ Enter Victor Lustig (not his real name). An Austro-Hungarian with a dark streak, by the age of 16 he had learned how to hustle at billiards and lay odds at the local racecourse. By 19 he had acquired a livid facial scar in an altercation with a jealous husband.   That blemish aside, he was a man of athletic good looks, with a taste for larceny and foreign intrigue. He spoke six languages and went under nearly as many aliases in the course of a continent-hopping life that also saw him act as a double (or possibly triple) agent. Along the way, he found time to dupe an impressive variety of banks and hotels on both sides of the Atlantic; to escape from no fewer than three supposedly impregnable prisons; and to swindle Al Capone out of thousands of dollars, while living to tell the tale. Undoubtedly the greatest of his hoaxes was the sale, to a wealthy but gullible Parisian scrap-metal dealer, of the Eiffel Tower in 1925.   In a narrative that thrills like a crime caper, best-selling biographer Christopher Sandford draws on newly released documents to tell the whole story of the greatest conman of the twentieth century.\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"The Book Elephant","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50733614301517,"sku":"9781803997711","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0829\/0808\/6605\/files\/9781803997711.jpg?v=1734628149","url":"https:\/\/thebookelephant.co.uk\/products\/9781803997711","provider":"The Book Elephant","version":"1.0","type":"link"}