Confident Women : : Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion

Locations
Call Number: 364.163 Te, Adult Book / Nonfiction / True Crime / Telfer, Tori
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Westgate Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	364.163 Te	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Westgate Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / True Crime / Telfer, Tori	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Introduction: Charming -- The glitterati. Jeanne de Saint-Rémy ; Cassie Chadwick ; Wang Ti -- The seers. The spiritualists ; Fu Futtam ; Rose Marks -- The fabulists. The Anastasias ; Roxie Ann Rice ; The tragediennes ; Bonny Lee Bakley -- The drifters. Lauretta J. Williams ; Margaret Lydia Burton Sante Kimes -- Conclusion: Confident.
"Why do we love stories about scammers so much? Journalist Tori Telfer dives into the stories of historical female con women and explains why we are so enamored by their scams"-- Provided by publisher.
The art of the con has a long and venerable tradition, and its female practitioners are some of the best-- or worst. Telfer introduces us to a host of lady swindlers whose scams ranged from the outrageous to the deadly. Among them: In 1700s Paris, Jeanne de Saint-Rémy scammed the royal jewelers out of a necklace made from six hundred and forty-seven diamonds by pretending she was best friends with Queen Marie Antoinette. Cassie Chadwick got banks to loan her upwards of $40,000 by telling people she was Andrew Carnegie's illegitimate daughter. In the 1970s teenager Roxie Ann Rice scammed the entire NFL. And the scams continue.... -- adapted from jacket

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Informative and delightful submitted by eilusk on June 19, 2022, 8:26pm Breathless, lavish descriptions of absolutely outrageous women. I thought the author did a good job giving some cultural and psychological context without advancing pet theories or pop psych overgeneralizations. The book identifies some common threads and trends in female con artists, but mostly focuses on case studies/mini-biographies of individual cons and their impacts on the world. I learned a little about history and politics from this book, but mostly I just had fun.