Bibliograph

King Con, the bizarre adventures of the Jazz Age's greatest impostor, Paul Willetts

Type

Label

King Con, the bizarre adventures of the Jazz Age's greatest impostor, Paul Willetts

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references (pages 331-336) and index

resource.biographical

individual biography

Illustrations

illustrationsplates

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

King Con

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

1011626596

Responsibility statement

Paul Willetts

Sub title

the bizarre adventures of the Jazz Age's greatest impostor

Summary

"The spellbinding tale of hustler Edgar Laplante--the king of Jazz Age con artists--who becomes the victim of his own dangerous game. Edgar Laplante was a smalltime grifter, an erstwhile vaudeville performer, and an unabashed charmer. But after years of playing thankless gigs and traveling with medicine shows, he decided to undertake the most demanding and bravura performance of his life. In the fall of 1917, Laplante reinvented himself as Chief White Elk: war hero, sports star, civil rights campaigner, Cherokee nation leader--and total fraud. Under the pretenses of raising money for struggling Native American reservations, Laplante dressed in buckskins and a feathered headdress and traveled throughout the American West, narrowly escaping exposure and arrest each time he left town. When the heat became too much, he embarked upon a lucrative continent-hopping tour that attracted even more enormous crowds, his cons growing in proportion to the adulation of his audience. As he moved through Europe, he spied his biggest mark on the Riviera: a prodigiously rich Hungarian countess, who was instantly smitten with the con man. The countess bankrolled a lavish trip through Italy that made Laplante a darling of the Mussolini regime and a worldwide celebrity, soaring to unimaginable heights on the wings of his lies. But then, at the pinnacle of his improbable success, Laplante's overreaching threatened to destroy him...In King Con, Paul Willetts brings this previously untold story to life in all its surprising absurdity, showing us how our tremendous capacity for belief and our longstanding obsession with celebrity can make fools of us all--and proving that sometimes truth is stranger than fiction."--, Provided by publisher

Table Of Contents

The fake's progress -- Continental grift

Target audience

adult

Classification