The first account of one of history's most notorious con artists, Victor Lustig, written by acclaimed biographer Christopher Sandford. An Austro-Hungarian with a dark streak, Victor Lustig was a man of athletic good looks, with a taste for larceny and foreign intrigue. He spoke eight 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 casinos on both sides of the Atlantic; to escape from no fewer than five 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 1921. In a narrative that thrills like a crime caper, bestselling biographer Christopher Sandford tells the whole story of the greatest conman of the twentieth century. AUTHOR: Christopher Sandford is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. He has written numerous biographies of music, film and sports stars, as well as Union Jack, a bestselling book on John F. Kennedy's special relationship with Great Britain described by the National Review as 'political history of a high order – the Kennedy book to beat'. Born and raised in England, Christopher currently lives in Seattle. 25 b/w illustrations