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The Modern Con Man: How to Get Something for Nothing | 
 enlarge | Author: Todd Robbins
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy New: $9.50
You Save: $7.45 (44%)
New (29) Used (10) from $7.75
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 79668
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.1 x 1
ISBN: 159691453X
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.163
EAN: 9781596914537
ASIN: 159691453X
Publication Date: April 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Cons, bar bets, card games, and general chicanery for the natural-born prankster. Whether it’s winning $50 on a bar bet, scoring seats closer to the fifty-yard line, or finagling a free meal, The Modern Con Man ensures that aspiring low-risk grifters will always come out on top. Filled with humorous facts and tables, a glossary of con terms, illustrations, the history of the con, and easy-to-follow swindles, this is the perfect gift for the hidden flim-flam artist in your life.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 The Conman Cons his Audience October 14, 2008
This book is basically a con, perpetrated by the author. He smirks and chuckles as people read the cover and become intrigued by the flashy colors and the bold title. He licks his lips as they rush with it to the counter, or click purchase on an online site. He counts his billfold as he guffaws, bemused by the gaff taken at the expense of his 'customer'... or what he would refer to as his "mark".
Buying this book, unless for the small cheap thrills of conning your co-workers into stupid acts of naivete -or the quick satisfaction of 'pulling a fast one' on someone so stupid as to fall for gimmicky bar-room antics- is worthless.
The title seems to imply that you too can be a conman. It's implicit, not guaranteed. There is no entry-level position on the totem of conmen, and there is certainly no book that will provide that gateway. Do as I did and pick it up off your stupid sibling's toilet-reading table and pocket it for free, rather than spend your money on a guy who seems to have fun mocking the very people paying his bills right to their very faces as they thumb through the pages of this waste of effort.
I laugh at the idea that Newsday, and all the others laud this work as being bold, brash, or an homage to the past heyday of grifting, and I smirk along the sidelines with Penn and Teller, who certainly are sure to see this as nothing more than a pleasant and cute grifter at work on a literary scale. If you buy this book you are falling into the trap of the grifter. He makes implicit remarks throughout the book that basically tell you what he is doing. If you want to read the egotistic blatherings of an author who says, "How to get something for nothing" and means it by showing you he is getting something by providing nothing, then spend you money, but you'd be better off investing in a bridge. I hear the Brooklyn Bridge is up for auction...
 an awfully fun read July 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is slick, stylish and very naughty. I read "The Modern Con Man" for fun, and it is fun. That doesn't mean I'm above using some of these cons to see if they work. In fact, I already have. I used one last week when staying in a hotel on a business trip, and when I made my way to the hotel lounge, my drinks were on the house. This book is more than fun, it pays for itself!
 Fun, but Pretty Weak - Does Anyone Fall For This Stuff? June 8, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
This was an interesting book, and I read through it pretty quickly. But honestly, this has nothing to do with conning people. It's all about bar bets and tricks.
The book details a lot of different tricks that you can do in various situations, like making a bet that you can wrap a normal-sized piece of paper around your head, or betting that you can roll a cue ball underneath a pool stick laid across a pool table.
But some of them are exceedingly lame, and if anyone ever wins a bet with them, I'll buy him a beer himself. Like in the aforementioned pool table trick: You lay a pool stick across a pool table, then make a bet that you can roll a cue ball underneath it. Of course, a cue ball will never fit in the two inch space between the stick and the pool table surface. So the trick? You roll it on the floor. Har har. Technically it's "under" the pool stick. The author would have you believe that you'll be winning money all over town with this trick. My guess is that you have a better chance of either looking like a total idiot or getting beat up.
This is insulting, in other words. Nobody is going to pay on such an idiotic bet.
And in the end, none of these are "cons" any more than telling someone a riddle they can't figure out his a con. They're not cons, they're just common parlor tricks, and some of them are very lame, even for parlor tricks.
Finally, the Real Work... April 20, 2008
7 out of 13 found this review helpful
Finally, a real book for real con-men. Most of these kinds of books are written jokingly, not this one. Inside MODERN CON MAN you will find some very useful information, and even more between the lines.I have about 6000 books on magic and another 1500 of what are commanly refered to in the underground as "crook books". MODERN CON MAN falls into the later catagory and I'm proud to ad it to the collection.If you're a con artist or would like to become one, get yourelf a copy of MODERN CON MAN. And don't just look at it as buying another book, look at it as an investment in your education (I've got a few more for you if you're serious, too).MODERN CON MAN is a book that will pay for itself many times over if you use the information. Con men love greedy people and the information in this book will show you how to exploit the greedy person's nature to it's fullest.I've found the best way to con someone is to make the victim think he's on the inside with you. Explain to him how you and he will con this third party. Then after the fact he's too scared to go to the police because he is a "conspirator" and would get arrested right along with you.Fear, lust, greed, and sympathy; these are the tools of the con artists trade. I have learned some of the best kept secrets in books on sales and selling.But I'm getting off track here. In addition to MODERN CON MAN by Todd Robbins here are a handfull of other books for you to study and learn the tricks of the trade:THE BIG CON by David Maurer. This one is sill in print because it's so good. Bruce Geller used it as a textbook to write all of the old Mission Impossible television shows back in the '60s. It was originally published in 1940 but the information is just as valuable today as it was back then, just use your imagination to hatch new schemes from the ideas presented here.HOW TO CHEAT AT EVERYTHING by Simon Lovell. This is the con artists bible. If ever there was a book that contained "every-trick-in-the-book" this would be it. So much information your head will explode with possibilities.HOW TO BECOME A PROFESSIONAL CON ARTIST by Dennis Marlock. Just what the title implies. This book is published by a company called Paladin Press in Boulder, Colorado [...] Get a copy of their catalog, it has dozens and dozens of books for the aspiring con artist. They just published one this month on how to become a televangelist and all the tricks of the trade for taking your congregation to the cleaners.And remember kids, in crime nothing succeeds like originality. So take the information you learn in these books and twist these schemes into something new and original that they never see coming.MODERN CON MAN by Todd Robbins is a great place to start. And if someone you con ever comes unglued and tries to start trouble, use this ruse: Explain to him that now that he knows how the scheme works he can now go out and perpetrate it on someone else. Explain to him how you haven't really conned him, you've provided him with an insider's education tught to him by a true legend in the business...you!You'd be surprised how often this short-circuits the situation and the victim actually walks away smiling...and you are left with your teeth intact.Enjoy!
From the NEW YORK OBSERVER April 10, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
"A handy, illustrated manual for would-be artists of deception! Todd Robbins is a con man and a good one at that... He parts fools from money with the precision of a surgeon. Even more enjoyable, though, than the nostalgic whisky-and-shadow-soaked hinterland the book evokes is the sinister pleasure Mr. Robbins takes in swindling. At heart, all con men are Manichaean, and Mr. Robbins is no exception. "The world is...separated into the Deceivers and the Deceived," he writes. "The sooner you decide which group you want to be in, the better off you will be."
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