Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson

Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud

In a time of dazzling scientific progress, how can we separate genuine breakthroughs from the noisy gaggle of false claims? From Deepak Chopra's "quantum alternative to growing old" to unwarranted hype surrounding the International Space Station, Robert Park leads us down the back alleys of fringe science, through the gleaming corridors of Washington power and even into our evolutionary past to search out the... (more)

The Great Pretenders: The True Stories Behind Famous Historical Mysteries

The Great Pretenders: The True Stories Behind Famous Historical Mysteries

by Jan Bondeson

"A guilty pleasure....The Victorian-era courtroom antics alone are worth the price of admission."— Publishers Weekly Jan Bondeson, M.D., focuses his medical expertise and insightful wit on the great unsolved mysteries of disputed identity of the last two hundred years. Did the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette really die in the Temple Tower, or did the Lost Dauphin reappear among the throngs of... (more)

The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man

The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man

by David W. Maurer

"To study the lingo of the con is inevitably to study the con itself," writes Luc Sante in his foreword to this classic work of urban anthropology, originally published in 1940. "A term such as cackle-bladder or shut-out cannot be properly described without giving a full account of its use, and such an account cannot be illustrated by stick figures." Thus The Big Con is filled with richly detailed... (more)

The Orientalist : Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life

The Orientalist : Solving the Mystery of a Strange and Dangerous Life

by Tom Reiss

A thrilling page-turner of epic proportions, Tom Reiss’s panoramic bestseller tells the true story of a Jew who transformed himself into a Muslim prince in Nazi Germany. Lev Nussimbaum escaped the Russian Revolution in a camel caravan and, as “Essad Bey,” became a celebrated author with the enduring novel Ali and Nino as well as an adventurer, a real-life Indiana Jones with a fatal secret. Reiss pursued Lev’s... (more)

The Voynich manuscript : the mysterious code that has defied interpretation for centuries

The Voynich manuscript : the mysterious code that has defied interpretation for centuries

by Gerry Kennedy

An examination of the many theories surrounding this enigmatic text, apparently written in code • Reveals the connections between this work and the Cathars, Roger Bacon, and John Dee • Explains the cryptanalysis methods used in attempts to break the code • Includes color images from the manuscript juxtaposed with other medieval writings Since its discovery by Wilfrid Voynich in an Italian monastery in 1912,... (more)

The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst (The Sailor's Classics #4)

The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst (The Sailor's Classics #4)

by Nicholas Tomalin, Ron Hall

The Sailor's Classics library introduces a new generation of readers to the best books ever written about small boats under sail In the autumn of 1968, Donald Crowhurst set sail from England to participate in the first single-handed nonstop around-the-world sailboat race. Eight months later, his boat was found in the mid-Atlantic, intact but with no one on board. In this gripping reconstruction, journalists... (more)

The Hoax

by Clifford Irving

Soon to be a major motion picture -- a no-holds-barred account of the most notorious literary hoax of the twentieth century, written by the perpetrator himself Before Oprah and TheSmokingGun.com had ever heard of James Frey, there was Clifford Irving. In 1971, he burst onto the literary scene, claiming to have been granted the right to pen the authorized biography of the famously reclusive icon Howard... (more)

Fraud: Essays

by David Rakoff

From This American Life alum David Rakoff comes a hilarious collection that single-handedly raises self-deprecation to an art form. Whether impersonating Sigmund Freud in a department store window during the holidays, climbing an icy mountain in cheap loafers, or learning primitive survival skills in the wilds of New Jersey, Rakoff clearly demonstrates how he doesn’t belong–nor does he try to. In his debut... (more)

The Museum of Hoaxes

by Alex Boese

Based on the author's popular website, Alex Boese's The Museum of Hoaxes takes readers on a tour of hundreds of documented hoaxes, many published here for the first time. You'll read about the curiosities and cons of the most notorious hornswogglers and flimflam men of the nineteenth century; you'll be astounded at the impostors, pretenders, carnies, and tricksters of the twentieth. Learn how Edgar Allan... (more)

The Scarith of Scornello: A Tale of Renaissance Forgery

The Scarith of Scornello: A Tale of Renaissance Forgery

by Ingrid D. Rowland

Bored teenager Curzio Inghirami staged perhaps the most outlandish prank of the seventeenth century when he hatched a wild scheme that preyed on the Italian fixation with ancestry by forging an array of ancient Latin and Etruscan documents. Stashing the counterfeit treasure in scarith (capsules made of hair and mud) near Scornello, Curzio reeled in seventeenth-century Tuscans who were eager to establish proof of... (more)

Naked Came the Stranger

by Penelope Ashe

In 1969, a group of reporters at Long Island Newsday decided to have some fun. They were appalled at the poor writing in the then-current bestsellers by Jacqueline Susann, Irving Wallace and Harold Robbins. They decided to have a contest to see who could write on an even lower level of tawdriness. Editor Mike McGrady directed the spinning of the plot. Then, twenty-four seasoned newsmen and newswomen each wrote... (more)

Stolen Words (Harvest Book)

by Thomas Mallon

"The definitive book on the subject" of plagiarism (The New York Times) is updated with a new afterword about the Internet. What is plagiarism, and why is it such a big deal? Since when is originality considered an indispensable attribute of authorship? Stolen Words is a deft and well-informed history of the sin every writer fears from every angle. Award-winning author Thomas Mallon begins in the seventeenth... (more)

Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety

Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety

by Wendy Kaminer

In Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials , social critic Wendy Kaminer illuminates the various ways in which society has come to value emotion over reason, faith over fact, and argues that declarations of intense belief have largely taken the place of rational discourse. In a world in which "How do you feel," seems to be a more frequently asked question than "What do you know," Kaminer's examination of the rise of... (more)

The Return of Martin Guerre

by Natalie Zemon Davis

The Inventive Peasant Arnaud du Tilh had almost persuaded the learned judges at the Parlement of Toulouse, when on a summer's day in 1560 a man swaggered into the court on a wooden leg, denounced Arnaud, and reestablished his claim to the identity, property, and wife of Martin Guerre. The astonishing case captured the imagination of the Continent. Told and retold over the centuries, the story of Martin Guerre... (more)

Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science

by Alan D. Sokal

In 1996, Alan Sokal published an essay in the hip intellectual magazine Social Text parodying the scientific but impenetrable lingo of contemporary theorists. Here, Sokal teams up with Jean Bricmont to expose the abuse of scientific concepts in the writings of today's most fashionable postmodern thinkers. From Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva to Luce Irigaray and Jean Baudrillard, the authors document the... (more)

The Great Shakespeare Fraud: The Strange, True Story of William-Henry Ireland

The Great Shakespeare Fraud: The Strange, True Story of William-Henry Ireland

by Patricia Pierce

William-Henry Ireland, at only nineteen, perpetrated the greatest Shakespeare forgery ever attempted. In this true crime history, Patricia Pierce uncovers drama, pathos, scandal and ultimately tragedy, in a tale which began with a 'dull-witted' youth longing for his father's love and grew to involve a host of famous names from the playwright Sheridan to the Prince of Wales, Mrs. Siddons and James Boswell. Brought... (more)

The DIARY OF JACK THE RIPPER: THE DIARY OF JACK THE RIPPER

The DIARY OF JACK THE RIPPER: THE DIARY OF JACK THE RIPPER

by James Maybrick, Shirley Harrison

After more than a year of authentication analysis, a Victorian journal found in England is determined to be the actual diary of the notorious serial killer known as Jack the Ripper. This detailed recounting of the authentication process contains a facsimile of the document itself.

Unraveling Piltdown

by John Evangelist Walsh

In 1913 amateur fossil hunter and archaeologist Charles Dawson found in a gravel pit the cranium and jaw of an entirely new species of humanoid, which became known as Piltdown man, which caused headlines worldwide as the missing link between man and ape. In 1952, it was exposed as a hoax. With eight pages of photos, this book is a wonderful detective story, and the first examination the convincingly fingers the... (more)

Great Exploration Hoaxes (Modern Library Exploration)

Great Exploration Hoaxes (Modern Library Exploration)

by David Roberts

Did Peary reach the North Pole? Was Admiral Byrd the first to fly over it? Did Frederick Cook actually make the first ascent of Mt. McKinley? Spanning 450 years of history, Great Exploration Hoaxes tells the spellbinding stories of ten men who pursued glory at any cost even the truth. Acclaimed author and explorer David Roberts delves deeply into the psychology behind the stunt and asks why these individuals, all... (more)

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Tags: hoax & fraud

by Peter Kurth

by Robert L. Park