Art scams are so numerous today that the specter of a lawsuit arising from a mistaken attribution has scared a number of experts away from the business of authentication and forgery, and with good reason. Art scams are increasingly convincing and involve incredible sums of money. The cons perpetrated by unscrupulous art dealers and their accomplices are proportionately elaborate. Anthony M. Amore's THE ART OF THE CON tells the stories of some of history's most notorious yet untold cons.

While driving out of the American embassy in Moscow one evening in 1978, the chief of the CIA’s Moscow station heard a knock on his car window. A man on the curb handed him an envelope whose contents stunned U.S. intelligence: details of top-secret Soviet research and developments in military technology that were totally unknown to the United States. In the years that followed, the man, Adolf Tolkachev, an engineer in a Soviet military design bureau, used his high-level access to hand over tens of thousands of pages of technical secrets.

In 1820, a suspicious vessel was spotted lingering off the coast of northern Florida, the Spanish slave ship Antelope. By the time it arrived in Savannah, Georgia, the puzzle of how to determine the captives' fates was inextricably knotted. Set against the backdrop of a city in the grip of both the financial panic of 1819 and the lingering effects of an outbreak of yellow fever, DARK PLACES OF THE EARTH vividly recounts the eight-year legal conflict that followed, during which time the Antelope's human cargo were mercilessly put to work on the plantations of Georgia.

Before the United States joined World War II, the FBI uncovered a ring of Nazi spies in New York City, and President Franklin Roosevelt declared J. Edgar Hoover as America’s spymaster. As war began, a naturalized German-American was recruited by Nazis to convey messages to Germany. This man, William G. Sebold, approached the FBI and became the first double agent in the Bureau’s history, and the investigation led to the arrest of 33 enemy agents.

When the German army found themselves desperate for a typhus vaccine, they turned to Rudolf Weigl. The success of Weigl's techniques gave him cover during the Nazi's reign, so he hired otherwise doomed men, protecting them from atrocity. Among the scientists saved was a gifted Jewish immunologist named Ludwik Fleck. Condemned to Buchenwald and pressured to recreate the vaccine, Fleck had to make a choice between his scientific ideals or the truth of his conscience.

The Russian Empire once extended deep into America: in 1818, Russia’s furthest outposts were in California and Hawaii. The dreamer behind this great Imperial vision was Nikolai Rezanov, whose quest to plant Russian colonies from Siberia to California led him to San Francisco, where he was captivated by Conchita, the 15-year-old daughter of the Spanish Governor. Owen Matthews conjures a brilliantly original portrait of one of Russia’s most eccentric Empire-builders.

The ancient Greeks invented democracy, theater, rational science and philosophy. But understanding these uniquely influential people has been hampered by their diffusion across the entire Mediterranean. Most ancient Greeks did not live in what is now Greece but in settlements scattered across Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Libya, France, Italy, Bulgaria, Russia and Ukraine. Acclaimed classics scholar Edith Hall’s INTRODUCING THE ANCIENT GREEKS is the first book to offer a synthesis of the entire ancient Greek experience.

Having grown from 390 athletes from 14 countries to 9,000 athletes from 78 countries, the Maccabiah Games (or the “Jewish Olympics,” as it has come to be known) continue to gain popularity. THE JEWISH OLYMPICS by Ron Kaplan details the history of the Maccabiah Games, including how they began, how they have impacted the Jewish community worldwide, and much more. In addition, it highlights the countless special achievements of the athletes over the course of the 19 games.

From Lyndon Johnson’s election in 1964, the greatest popular-vote landslide in American history, to the pivotal 1966 midterms, when Ronald Reagan burst forth onto the national stage, LANDSLIDE brings alive a country transformed --- by riots, protests, the rise of television, the shattering of consensus --- and the two towering personalities whose choices in those moments would reverberate through the country for decades to come.

One of the most dramatic periods of British history, the Wars of the Roses didn't end at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Despite the death of Richard III and Henry VII's victory, it continued underground into the following century with plots, pretenders and subterfuge by the ousted white rose faction. In a brand new interpretation of this turning point in history, historian Desmond Seward reviews the story of the Tudors' seizure of the throne and shows that for many years they were far from secure.

The Statue of Liberty has become one of the most recognizable monuments in the world: a symbol of freedom and the American Dream. But the story of the creation of the statue has been obscured by myth. In reality, she was the inspiration of one quixotic French sculptor hungry for fame and adoration. LIBERTY'S TORCH tells the story of an artist, entrepreneur and inventor who fought against all odds to create this wonder of the modern world.

When Robert Bunch arrived in Charleston to take up the post of British consul in 1853, he was young and full of ambition, but even he couldn’t have imagined the incredible role he would play in the history-making events to unfold. In an age when diplomats often were spies, Bunch’s job included sending intelligence back to the British government in London. Yet as the United States threatened to erupt into Civil War, Bunch found himself plunged into a double life, settling into an amiable routine with his slavery-loving neighbors on the one hand, while working furiously to thwart their plans to achieve a new Confederacy.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edward J. Larson recovers an important --- yet almost always overlooked --- chapter of George Washington’s life, revealing how Washington saved the United States by coming out of retirement to lead the Constitutional Convention and serve as our first president. Larson uncovers Washington’s vital role in shaping the Convention --- and shows how it was only with his support and willingness to serve as President that the states were brought together and ratified the Constitution, thereby saving the country.

Some historians claim that Richard III's "black legend" is nothing more than political propaganda. Yet such an interpretation, according to Desmond Seward, suggests a refusal to face the facts of history. Even in the king's lifetime, there were rumors about his involvement in the murders of Henry VI and of his nephews, while his reign was considered by many to be a nightmare, not least for the king himself. The real Richard III was both a chilling and compelling monarch, a peculiarly grim young English precursor of Machiavelli's Prince.

Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean, the stepping stone between Europe and Africa, the link between the Latin West and the Greek East. Its strategic location has tempted Roman emperors, French princes and Spanish kings. The subsequent struggles to conquer and keep it have played crucial roles in the rise and fall of the world’s most powerful dynasties. Yet Sicily has often been little more than a footnote in books about other empires. John Julius Norwich’s engrossing narrative is the first to knit together all of the colorful strands of Sicilian history into a single comprehensive study.

The Golden Age of the Spanish Empire would establish five centuries of Western supremacy across the globe and usher in an era of transatlantic exploration that eventually gave rise to the modern world. It was a time of discovery and adventure, of great political and social change --- it was a time when Spain learned to rule the world. Assembling a spectacular cast of legendary characters like the Duke of Alba, El Greco, Miguel de Cervantes and Diego Velázquez, Robert Goodwin brings the Spanish Golden Age to life with the vivid clarity and gripping narrative of an epic novel.

TUDORS VERSUS STEWARTS brings alive a neglected aspect of British history --- the blood-spattered steps of two small countries on the northern fringes of Europe towards the union of their crowns. Beginning with the dramatic victories of two usurpers --- Henry VII in England and James IV in Scotland --- in the late 15th century, Linda Porter's book sheds new light on Henry VIII, his daughter Elizabeth I and his great-niece, Mary Queen of Scots, still seductive more than 400 years after her death.

From 1957 to 1964, Robert Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa channeled nearly all of their considerable powers into destroying each other. Kennedy's battle with Hoffa burst into the public consciousness with the 1957 Senate Rackets Committee hearings and intensified when his brother named him attorney general in 1961. RFK put together a "Get Hoffa" squad within the Justice Department, devoted to destroying one man. But Hoffa, with nearly unlimited Teamster funds, was not about to roll over.

From the moment Charles Dickens, the century's best-loved novelist and London's greatest observer, arrived in the city in 1822, he obsessively walked its streets, recording its pleasures, curiosities and cruelties. Now, with him, Judith Flanders leads us through the markets, transport systems, rivers, slums, alleys, cemeteries, gin palaces, chop-houses and entertainment emporia of Dickens' London, to reveal the Victorian capital in all its variety, vibrancy and squalor.

Joel Reynolds, a crusading attorney, stumbles on one of the US Navy’s best-kept secrets: a submarine detection system that floods entire ocean basins with high-intensity sound --- and drives whales onto beaches. As Reynolds launches a legal fight to expose and challenge the Navy program, marine biologist Ken Balcomb witnesses a mysterious mass stranding of whales near his research station in the Bahamas. Investigating this calamity, Balcomb is forced to choose between his conscience and an oath of secrecy he swore to the Navy in his youth.

In 1776, Thomas Paine published Common Sense, the Continental Congress declared independence, and George Washington crossed the Delaware. We are familiar with these famous moments in American history, but we know little about the extraordinary events occurring that same year far beyond the British colonies. In this distinctive history, Claudio Saunt tells an intriguing, largely untold story of an immense and restless continent connected in surprising ways.