This was an entertaining print book featuring an assortment of over thirty stories about people from the distant past and modern-day, who ran a variety of scams and for a while at least, got away with it. It begins with Tania Head, who misled people into believing she had been in one of the twin towers on 9/11. It covers people like poet Thomas Chatterton, who moight have had a better career had he let his own light shine instead of faking the lgihts of others, and who kileld himself at the age of only 17.
There's Anna Anderson who wa snot a Romanov. Not even close. There's a deck of cheaters at casinos; Tom Keating, the highly-talented art forger, Harry Houdini, who was really not a forger in the vein of all the others here, although he clearly used tricks to achieve the effects he did with his magic and escape stunts.
There's the fake cowboy, Frank Hopkins, the fake concert pianist, Joyce Hatto, the Count Saint-Germain and the Count Cagliostro neither of which could be counted on for honesty. There's the George Hull 'giant', and the fake Shakesspeares of William Ireland. There's Peter Pan - or rather James Hogue, who lied about his age and kept attending school long beyond normal graduation time. There's the Cottingley Fairies invented by children Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright, so poorly made yet so ridiculously convincing to the adults of the time.
There's PT Barnum, scam artist and unsurprisingly nothing like the character in the 2017 Hugh Jackman movie musical. There's 'Princess' Caraboo - who also had a movie made of her life which was argulably more accurate tham the Barnum musical. There's faked ghost photographs, and the faked round-the-world voyage of Donald Crowhurst. There's faker Charles Dawson who was probably responsible for the nonsensical 'Piltdown Man' which has long been dismissed by scientists, but still obsesses creationists.
There's David Hampton - celebrated now for knowing no celebrities, Misha Defonesca, who didn't escape from the Nazis, George Psalmanazar, who never went near Formosa, Charles Ingram and Charles van Doren, the quiz show cheats, Horace de Vere Cole, who fooled the Royal Navy - into thinking they were being visted by the Emperor of Abyssinia no less. There's Heinrich Schliemann who did and didn't discover Troy, Janet Cooke, the reporter who didn't discover Jimmy the street child, and the faked diaries of Adolf Hitler. Alas no partridge in a pear tree nor the kitchen sink, but pretty much everything else you may or may not have heard of.
Obviously the lesson here is beware! Don't believe everything you see, nor everything you're told, especially if it's from a politician! I enjoyed this book and commend it as a worthy read.
