The con job has thrived in every time and place the world has known, but a case can be made that the con as we know it was perfected in America with the advent of "the fix," the guarantee that the "mark" won't squeal to the cops. David Mamet and Jim Thompson are just two of many writers whose work romanticizes the con as part of American history; scholar David W. Maurer is another. His book The Big Con, a sociological study of the con man's culture, was first published in 1940 while he was teaching in the linguistics department at the University of Louisville, and it remains a valuable resource for all those fascinated with one of the criminal world's most interesting sub-sects. As would befit a professor in his field, Maurer was interested in the way con men spoke as much as how they operated. Criminals often speak in their own invented colloquialisms and codes, and his book, via anecdote and observation, opens a window into this secretive and colorful world. Maurer is clearly enamored of pre-Depression grifters with nicknames like the Narrow Gage Kid, Yellow Kid, and Postal Kid, descriptive appellations rarely encountered outside of Tom Waits' lyrics. Yet his stories and analysis ultimately seem like little more than a tantalizing build-up to the book's real payoff: an extensive dictionary of con-man lingo. Luc Sante's foreword to the recently reprinted edition is useful for putting the book in perspective: The con, Sante hypothesizes, is most widespread in times of great prosperity, and he writes that it would be useful to return to Maurer's text in light of today's flourishing economy. Perhaps he's right, as the classic con continues to evolve with technology; the characters Maurer writes about would go nuts with the wonders of the Internet. The Bandwidth Kid, anyone?