King Con - The Bizarre Adventures of the Jazz Age's Greatest Impostor

Zusatztext 88012849 Informationen zum Autor Paul Willetts Klappentext 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. 1 The waiting was almost over. Within the next few minutes, Tom Longboat, an Onondagan marathon runner who had just stopped off in San Jose, California, would be entering the pulpit of the First Baptist Church. Now twenty-eight years old, Tom was way past the age when newspapers carried stories about him winning race after race and twice competing on Canada’s Olympic team, but he remained famous enough for his presence in town to spark excited chatter. That evening--Sunday, March 4, 1917--several hundred people filled the pews. Speaking to them from the pulpit of this balconied modern church was its resident preacher, the Reverend James W. Kramer, who had a reputation for staging services “better than a movie show.” Broad-shouldered and as fidgety as a marionette midperformance, Kramer had a large, bulging-browed face, its youthful smoothness extending to his prematurely bald crown. In deep, sonorous tones, he said, “I’m sorry the world has still got to be watched. There is something the matter with the world. It wants a religion that not only says, ‘This is the way,’ but walks in that way.” He was nearing the end of that evening’s sermon. “You need religion,” he assured the congregation. “And don’t forget that genuine religion works!” He went on to announce the imminent unveiling and illumination of a newly commissioned ecclesiastical painting, which he described as a masterpiece. “During the illumination, our friend Tom Longboat will sing .?.?.” Kramer meant to say that Tom would be performing the well-known hymn “Just as I Am, Without One Plea,” only he muddled his words and said, “Just as I Am, Without One Flea.” Laughter from his audience compounded Kramer’s embarrassment. Distraction was, luckily for him, on hand. The lights were shut off, ready for the painting to be unveiled and then spotlit. Here was the cue for the boyishly handsome Tom to take center stage. The much-talked-about wound he’d incurred while serving with the Canadian medical corps in France--heart of the war America had not thus far joined--didn’t prevent him from carrying himself with nonchalant grace, his physiq...

Product details

• Authors: Paul Willetts
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.08.2018
• EAN: 9780451495815
• ISBN: 978-0-451-49581-5
• No. of pages: 368
• Dimensions: 163 mm x 242 mm x 33 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Humanities, art, music > History; Non-fiction book > History > Biographies, autobiographies