{"product_id":"victor-lustig","title":"Victor Lustig","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe period after the First World War was a golden age for the confidence man.\u003c\/strong\u003e ‘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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MediaPlace","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57400246141310,"sku":"NW9781803997711","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1379\/1261\/files\/9781803997711.jpg?v=1778606714","url":"https:\/\/mediaplace.com\/en-usa\/products\/victor-lustig","provider":"MediaPlace","version":"1.0","type":"link"}