100 books like The Curse of the Marquis de Sade

Out of all the investigative reporting that emerged from the 2008 financial meltdown, Henriques’ account of the scheme that out-Ponzied Ponzi is the book that stays with me.

The Madoff story is about brazen lies and insatiable greed, to be sure, but Henriques’ approach is nuanced, thorough, yet accessible, showing the complacency (one might say complicity) of investors and regulators, dazzled or cowed by Madoff’s magic.

How do you pull off a $65 billion scam? With a lot of help. 

Linguistics professor Maurer was fascinated by con-artist slang and subcultures, but this classic 1940 work is more than a sociology treatise.

It offers precious insights and yarns from the aristocrats of the underworld, the operators of the Big Con, a high-stakes form of flim-flammery that required many talented performers and thrived in the early years of the twentieth century.

(The fake betting parlor in the movie The Sting is a good example of how these folks operated.)

Maurer peels back the layers of a juicy world of crime and deception. 

This as-told-to memoir by Weil, better known as the Yellow Kid, is a crash course in grifts of all kinds, from petty barroom scams to elaborate shady deals in oil, stocks, and real estate.

Weil is a witty tour guide and a gifted impostor, posing as a geologist, banker, or tycoon as needed. To me, what’s most eye-opening is his total lack of compassion for his victims, whom he regards as greedy suckers who deserve to be fleeced.

Criminals rarely see themselves as in the wrong, and Weil’s efforts to justify his larcenous career make for an intriguing con played on the reader.  

Nobody was better than New Yorker writer Mitchell at capturing the gritty realities of the Bowery, but he met his match when he decided to profile Joe Gould, a Harvard-educated bohemian said to be working on a massive “Oral History of Our Time.”

Twenty years later, Mitchell returned to his subject and revealed the secret he’d learned shortly after the first piece was published: that Gould had perpetrated (with Mitchell’s unwitting help) one of the great literary hoaxes of all time – not out of greed or a desire for fame, but out of desperation and mental illness.

But is Mitchell giving us the straight story, or is there more he’s not telling? This labyrinth of smoke and mirrors still astonishes me. 

This book tells the story of Therese Humbert, swindler extraordinaire. There’s just something thrilling about a con artist fighting their way through life with nothing more than their own wits. I loved reading about Therese’s boldness and cleverness.

I felt I could live vicariously through her as she hustled her way into French society. Her fraud lasted for years, and I couldn’t help admiring her coolness under fire. Her story made for an exciting and incredible read.

Orwell is my favorite nonfiction writer.

This is a workplace memoir in part because of the engaging, disgusting scenes where he labors as a plongeur (dishwasher) in a grimy French restaurant. But in a broader sense, it’s a book about the hard work of being poor.

Every sentence is intelligent and the overall thrust is deeply moral—Orwell’s calling card.

“On the morning of its first birthday, a baby was found floating in a cello case in the English Channel.” From the opening line this is a story you will fall in love with!  Sofie, the orphaned baby in the cello case, is rescued from a shipwreck by an elderly gentleman called Charles who decides to raise her himself. He does an excellent job and I adore Sofie’s bravery, her love of knowledge, and her passion for adventure. Certain that her mother is still alive, Sofie and Charles set off for Paris to look for her, believing that you “never ignore a possible.” This is a fabulous book about pursuing your dreams and the power of hope. Plus the writing is just gorgeous!  

It can be difficult to recall that, while laying waste to the armies of Europe, proving himself to be one of the finest military commanders in history, Napoleon was writing salty love letters home to his wife. Narrated in first-person diary-style by Josephine, Sandra Gulland’s sensational trio of books is a credit to the sometimes-overlooked genre of historical autobiographical fiction. The events around her life with the self-anointed Emperor of the French are defined with both intimacy and sweep. Josephine emerges as a most intriguing woman, charming and clever, and a full participant aside from her husband as he rises and falls.

The three books cover the many phases of her exceptional life. From her childhood in the French colony of Martinique, through her first marriage and imprisonment during the revolution, to her fateful introduction to the “strange little man,” and through their marriage and demise, the woman who became… show more.

This splendid biography traces the life and times of the Marquise Du Châtelet, born in Paris in December 1706, who became one of the most erudite women of her époque. For fifteen years she was the companion to Voltaire, the best-known of the French philosophes. She mastered calculus and translated Newton’s Principia, in addition to carrying on an active social life and raising several children. She died at the age of 42, following the birth of a daughter conceived with another lover. The author explains her subject’s life course as “from a life of frivolity to a life of the mind.” It’s a great read.

California-born Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher’s contribution to our culture was revolutionary. Before her, no man or woman wrote about food as they might about art: what was noteworthy in the meal, how the cauliflower was cooked or the paté presented, and how all of it made her feel. She is perhaps best known for her masterpiece The Gastronomical Me, her memoir about her sensory awakening around food, cooking, and love when she moved to Dijon, France. After returning to the States, Fisher moved with her two daughters to Aix-en-Provence following World War II. By now, the memoir of Provence—the farmhouse, lavender fields, and dappled summer light—have become a genre unto themselves. But as with everything this trailblazer wrote, few have ever done is as well or with such exquisite understatement as Fisher did in Map of Another Town.

It is a soulful and beautifully atmospheric chronicle of building… show more.