Welcome to April, nonfiction friends! I hope that you’ve been pleasantly surprised by any April Fools’ Day jokes or pranks you come across in your personal and online endeavors. I’m writing this on Wednesday, so I don’t know what the buzzy or trending joke of the year is, but I hope it’s at least a little bit kind. The world is hard right now.
For whatever reason, I am deeply invested in three television shows about con artists – The Dropout on Hulu, Inventing Anna on Netflix, and WeCrashed on AppleTV+. In honor of the holiday and my current obsession, I want to share a few books from my TBR about scams (hopefully, there will be more diversity concerning authors writing about this topic in the future!):
Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street by Sheelah Kolhatkar
Wall Street scams are fascinating to me because it seems like the whole system is an elaborate system of smoke and mirrors most people (including myself) don’t really understand. This book is about Steven A. Cohen, a pioneer of the hedge fund industry who made billions by placing bets on the stock market. Turns out he was also cheating – his fund, SAC Capital, eventually became the target of a multiyear government investigation for insider trading. This one has been long-listed for several awards and named a best book of of the year by the New York Times and The Economist.
Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo
I don’t know anything about the world of modern art, but it seems like another industry ripe for scammers to thrive. This book is about two men, John Drewe and John Myatt, who “exploited the archive of British art institutions to irrevocably legitimize the hundreds of pieces they forged.” Fascinatingly enough, many of the forgeries they created are still believed to be originals and hang in both museums and private collections. Scandalous!
The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Quest for Earth’s Ultimate Trophy by Paige Williams
I would not necessarily expect paleontology to be an industry open for fraud, but here we go! This book recounts the sale of a nearly complete tyrannosaurus skeleton from Mongolia at auction for over $1 million. When paleontologists saw the listing, they alerted the Mongolian government, which promptly opened up an “international custody battle” over the skeleton. Through this story, the book also explores the history of fossil collecting where lines between legal and illegal can be easily crossed. This reminds me a bit of both The Feather Thief and The Orchid Thief and I am here for it!
Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!
One Thing I Like
I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned Ijeoma Oluo’s (author of So You Want to Talk About Race) email newsletter, Behind the Book, before. It’s great, but this week’s edition is particularly excellent. In “We Have the Right to Not Be Annoyed,” Oluo uses the Will Smith/Chris Rock incident at the Oscars as a way to write more deeply about boundaries, anti-racism, and the specific ways that white people (particularly women) show up in these conversations. I hesitate to write more because I just won’t come close to summing it up well. Just click through and read it and take it to heart.
For more nonfiction reads, head over to the podcast service of your choice and download For Real, which I co-host with my dear friend Alice. If you have any questions/comments/book suggestions, you can find me on social media @kimthedork. Happy weekend!