David Warren Maurer était un linguiste éminent dont les recherches académiques se sont concentrées sur le langage du monde souterrain américain. Pendant des décennies, il s'est immergé dans les argots spécialisés et les pratiques de diverses sous-cultures, des criminels aux toxicomanes en passant par les contrebandiers d'alcool. Ses recherches, nourries par une vaste correspondance et des entretiens avec des centaines d'individus en marge de la société, ont éclairé leurs schémas de communication et leurs visions du monde uniques. L'héritage de Maurer réside dans sa documentation méticuleuse et son analyse perspicace des couches linguistiques cachées qui façonnent les identités et les opérations de ces communautés marginalisées.
When the first American tax on distilled spirits was established in 1791, violence broke out in Pennsylvania. The resulting Whiskey Rebellion sent hundreds of families down the Ohio River by flatboat, stills on board, to settle anew in the fertile bottomlands of Kentucky.
'Of all the gifters, the confidence man is the aristocrat, ' wrote David Maurer, a proposition he definitively proved in The Big Con. A professor of linguistics who specialised in underworld argot, Maurer won the trust of hundreds of swindlers. They let him in on not simply their language, but their folkwrys and the astonishingly complex and elaborate schemes whereby unsuspecting marks, hooked by their own greed and dishonesty were 'taken off' - i. e. , cheated - of thousands upon thousands of dollars. The products of amazing ingenuity, crack timing and attention to every last detail, these 'big cons', as thoroughly scripted and rehearsed as any Hollywood production, richly deserve Maurer's description as 'the most effective swindling device which man has ever invented. ' The Big Con is a treasure trove of American lingo (the write, the rag, the pay-off, ropers, shills, the cold poke and the convincer) and indeliable characters (Yellow Kid Weil, Barney the Patch, the Seldom-Seen Kid, Limehouse Chappie and Larry the Lug). First published in 1940, The Big Con makes compelling reading whilst being the most authentic and utterly authoritative study on the con artist and his game.