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My own Spam Primer site has given you the basics about spam, "phishing" and other e-mail pests, but ScamBusters goes deeper -- not just to uncover the latest scams online, but in the real world too. Their free newsletter keeps you up-to-date on the new twists con men are trying to rip you off. Hey! Let's be careful out there! From This is True for 12 December 2004 Suggestions for further reading:
 By: Thomas J. Craughwell List Price: $15.95 Amazon Price: $10.85 Editorial Review: Saints are not born, they are made. And many, as Saints Behaving Badly reveals, were made of very rough materials indeed. The first book to lay bare the less than saintly behavior of thirty-two venerated holy men and women, it presents the scandalous, spicy, and sleazy detours they took on the road to sainthood. In nineteenth- and twentieth-century writings about the lives of the saints, authors tended to go out of their way to sanitize their stories, often glossing over the more embarrassing cases with phrases such as, “he/she was once a great sinner.” In the early centuries of the Church and throughout the Middle Ages, however, writers took a more candid and spirited approach to portraying the saints. Exploring sources from a wide range of periods and places, Thomas Craughwell discovered a veritable rogues gallery of sinners-turned-saint. There’s St. Olga, who unleashed a bloodbath on her husband’s assassins; St. Mary of Egypt, who trolled the streets looking for new sexual conquests; and Thomas Becket, who despite his vast riches refused to give his cloak to a man freezing to death in the street. Written with wit and respect (each profile ends with what inspired the saint to give up his or her wicked ways) and illustrated with amusing caricatures, Saints Behaving Badly will entertain, inform, and even inspire Catholic readers across America.  By: Stephen Mihm List Price: $29.95 Amazon Price: $19.77 Editorial Review: Listen to a short interview with Stephen Mihm Few of us question the slips of green paper that come and go in our purses, pockets, and wallets. Yet confidence in the money supply is a recent phenomenon: prior to the Civil War, the United States did not have a single, national currency. Instead, countless banks issued paper money in a bewildering variety of denominations and designs--more than ten thousand different kinds by 1860. Counterfeiters flourished amid this anarchy, putting vast quantities of bogus bills into circulation. Their success, Stephen Mihm reveals, is more than an entertaining tale of criminal enterprise: it is the story of the rise of a country defined by a freewheeling brand of capitalism over which the federal government exercised little control. It was an era when responsibility for the country's currency remained in the hands of capitalists for whom "making money" was as much a literal as a figurative undertaking. Mihm's witty tale brims with colorful characters: shady bankers, corrupt cops, charismatic criminals, and brilliant engravers. Based on prodigious research, it ranges far and wide, from New York City's criminal underworld to the gold fields of California and the battlefields of the Civil War. We learn how the federal government issued greenbacks for the first time and began dismantling the older monetary system and the counterfeit economy it sustained. A Nation of Counterfeiters is a trailblazing work of history, one that casts the country's capitalist roots in a startling new light. Readers will recognize the same get-rich-quick spirit that lives on in the speculative bubbles and confidence games of the twenty-first century. (20070921) By: J.B. Stanley List Price: $13.95 Amazon Price: $11.16 Editorial Review: They're in deep guacamole... When Lindy suggests the supper club members join a Mexican cooking class, the five friends jump at the idea. For James, the cervezas and black bean dip provide a welcome distraction from his relationship woes, since Lucy's romantic feelings for him have turned as frosty as a frozen magarita. At least the cooking class heats up when a spunky reporter and her friends, twin sisters with supermodel physiques, enroll. But when people start turning up dead, and the evidence points toward Lindy, things become hotter than a jalapeño. Featuring authentic Mexican and Spanish recipes "Heavy on fun, light on gore, this savory mystery comes complete with yummy recipes." —Publishers Weekly The Supper Club Mystery Series is... "...appealing to anyone whos ever experienced the horrors of dieting." —BookPage "...a well-plotted mystery sprinkled with delightful characters and topped off with a dash of suspense." —Romantic Times Book Reviews "...just plain fun to read—with quirky, small-town characters and enough action to keep readers interested." —CozyLibrary.com  List Price: $16.95 Amazon Price: $11.53 Editorial Review: Once I hear the clatter of chips I almost go into convulsions," said Dostoyevsky, while Anatole France wrote, "The gambler is driven by the fascination of danger at the bottom of all great passions." The characters the reader meets in Players—chess grand masters, poolroom hustlers, or street-hardened practitioners of the short con—are all alike propelled by the ecstasy of risk. "The stake is money," France wrote, "in other words, immediate, infinite possibilities." In fact, as the reader hooks up with David Mamet in the poker room and meets Damon Runyon's Bookie Bob, Saul Bellow's immortal Yellow Kid, and learns from Herbert Asbury about the antics of Izzy and Moe, and from David Maurer about the discreet charm of the confidence man, Walter Tevis on Fast Eddie Felson and Minnesota Fats on the seductions of nineteenth-century gambling dens, high lives and low will merge and the world of gambler and con-artist will blur. Selected writings by Jorge Luis Borges, Hunter S. Thompson, Nick Tosches, and many others are featured.  By: Jay Atkinson List Price: $14.00 Amazon Price: $11.20 Editorial Review: For one year, writer Jay Atkinson worked as a private eye for the storied firm McCain Investigations, founded by the late Joe McCain, one of the most decorated police officers in Boston history. In this colorful narrative, Atkinson describes the cases he worked that year, chasing down an assortment of felons, thieves, and con artists, as well as the ghost of a real American hero, legendary cop Joe McCain. Big Joe was the genuine article, a detective so committed to his work that a gunshot wound suffered in the line of duty took thirteen years to kill him. In Legends of Winter Hill Atkinson traces Big Joe’s career from the day he put on his Boston Metropolitan Police uniform in the 1950s through the heyday of his run-ins with mafiosi, bad cops, and ruthless killers, up to his death in 2001. Atkinson also follows the career of Joe McCain’s son, Joe Jr., a tattooed motorcycle fanatic who took up the mantle of his father and became a cop himself. Legends of Winter Hill takes you into an alluring and gritty world where heroes go unsung every day and moral boundaries aren’t always black and white. |
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