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Tags: hoax & fraud

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  Anastasia

  The Riddle of Anna Anderson

  by Peter Kurth

  Updated with an afterword by the author.
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  Voodoo Science

  The Road from Foolishness to Fraud

  by Robert L. Park

  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)
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  The Great Pretenders: The True Stories Behind Famous Historical Mysteries

  by Jan Bondeson

  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 pretenders to the throne? And what does DNA testing reveal about the Dauphin's mummified heart? Who was Kaspar Hauser: an abused child, the crown prince of Baden, or a pathological liar?
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  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)
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  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)
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  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)
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  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)
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  The Diary of Jack the Ripper

  The Discovery, The Investigation, The Debate

  by Shirley Harrison

  The pages of The Diary of Jack the Ripper reveal the unimaginable —that more than a century ago, the legendary serial killer at work in London’s Whitechapel kept a record of his bestial mutilations of women. The writer of the horrific journal is James Maybrick, a depraved, drug-taking, womanizing, 49-year-old Liverpool cotton merchant with a history of domestic violence. In this analysis of his diary,... (more)
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  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)
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  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)
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  Great Exploration Hoaxes

  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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  A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud

  by Karl Sabbagh

  Now in paperback: "A diverting tale of foul play among the ferns." - Los Angeles Times . A Rum Affair is an absorbing tale of scientific chicanery and academic intrigue-critically acclaimed and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In the 1940s, the eminent British botanist John Heslop Harrison proposed a controversial theory: Species of plants on the islands off the west coast of Scotland, he... (more)
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  The Poet and the Murderer

  by Simon Worrall

  In The Poet and the Murderer , acclaimed journalist Simon Worrall takes readers into the haunting mind of Mark Hofmann, one of the most daring literary forgers and remorseless murderers of the late twentieth century. He was a young Mormon boy who loathed what he believed to be the hypocrisy of his faith, and who devised secret ways to infiltrate and undermine the church. Mark Hofmann began his career by... (more)
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  The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research

  by Derek Freeman

  Was anthropologist Margaret Mead's seminal ethnographic study of the sexual practices of Samoan girls based on a hoax? This timely inquiry makes a strong case that it was. In The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead , Derek Freeman conducts a detailed historical analysis of Margaret Mead's Samoan researches and of her training in New York by Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict. By examining hitherto unpublished... (more)
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  Margaret Mead and the Heretic: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth

  by Derek Freeman

  The late renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead's major field-work study COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA became the key text in the nature-nurture controversy and a reference point for the social and sexual revolution of the 1960s. Derek Freeman's book, updated here with a new Foreword, refutes Mead's work, claiming she was misinformed by Samoan natives regarding the sexual proclivities of their culture.
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  The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick

  How a Spectacular Hoax Became History

  by Peter Lamont

  We assume that the Indian rope trick is a piece of ancient Hindu magic. But think again: it is actually the product of a hoax which appeared in the Chicago Tribune in 1890. This wonderfully researched, playfully written book takes us on a journey through Victorian society where we discover the interest in magic of Charles Dickens; Alfred Russell Wallace; Edward, Prince of Wales; Lord Northbrook and Charles Darwin.... (more)
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  The Ern Malley Affair

  by Michael Heyward

  When the young, successful and beautiful Australian literary editor, Max Harris, received out of the blue a package of poems by a recently deceased poet, Ern Malley, he was convinced that he had stumbled on the work of a young genius.
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  The Hand That Signed the Paper

  by Helen Darville, Helen Demidenko

  A story about colonized Ukraine and its people during World War II showing that sustained contempt, brutality and humiliation against the despised Slavs of Ukraine led to their rising up on behalf of the occupying Nazi forces against those they perceived as their oppressors: Jews and Communists.
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  The Poet and the Murderer

  A True Story of Literary Crime and the Art of Forgery

  by Simon Worrall

  In THE POET AND THE MURDERER, acclaimed journalist Simon Worrall takes readers into the haunting mind of one of the most daring literary forgers and remorseless murderers of the late twentieth century. He was a young Mormon boy who loathed what he believed to be the hypocrisy of his faith, and who devised secret ways to infiltrate and undermine the church. He began his career by forging and selling rare Mormon... (more)
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  Coming of Age in Samoa

  A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation

  by Margaret Mead

  Rarely do science and literature come together in the same book.  When they do -- as in Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, for example -- they become classics, quoted and studied by scholars and the general public alike. Margaret Mead accomplished this remarkable feat not once but several times, beginning with Coming of Age in Samoa.   It details her historic journey to American Samoa, taken where she... (more)