{"product_id":"victor-lustig-book-christopher-sandford-9781803997711","title":"Victor Lustig","description":"The period after the First World War was a golden age for the confidence man. ‘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.  That 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.  In 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.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51100424995089,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51100425191697,"sku":"GOR014176208","price":9.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51533626802449,"sku":"NGR9781803997711","price":16.09,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1803997710.jpg?v=1750930310","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/products\/victor-lustig-book-christopher-sandford-9781803997711","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}