In Caught in the Act Aisha is getting bored of her relationship with Sean & when new girl Ness appears on the scene of the ...

If you like the Top Gear TV show but you wish it was made from paper & didn't move around so much, this is the answer to ...

' 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 & the astonishingly complex & elaborate schemes whereby unsuspecting marks, hooked by their own greed & dishonesty were 'taken off'
- i. e., cheated
- of thousands upon thousands of dollars. The products of amazing ingenuity, crack timing & attention to every last detail, these 'big cons', as thoroughly scripted & 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 & the convincer) & indeliable characters (Yellow Kid Weil, Barney the Patch, the Seldom-Seen Kid, Limehouse Chappie & Larry the Lug). First published in 1940, The Big Con makes compelling reading whilst being the most authentic & utterly authoritative study on the con artist & his game.

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Twenty-four hours after arriving in Dublin, Muhammad Ali rang his publicist Harold Conrad. ' Hey, Hal?' said Ali, 'where are all the niggers in this country?' ' Ali, ' replied Conrad, 'there aren't any.' On July 19, 1972, it took Muhammad Ali 11 rounds to defeat Al ' Blue' Lewis at Croke Park, Dublin. A mere footnote in the larger Ali story, this fight against a game ex-convict from Detroit marked the culmination of an extraordinary week in Ireland's sporting & cultural history. From the moment the world's most charismatic athlete touched down at Dublin Airport & announced his maternal great-grandfather Abe Grady had emigrated from County Clare more than a century before, the country was in his thrall &, of course, being Ali
- he loved it. It was to be a most extraordinary week for both him & the people he met. Ali was both charming & charmed by those who came to pay homage
- among them, the then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, civil rights campaigner Bernadette Devlin, oscar-winning director John Huston, actor Peter O' Toole & an old lady who invited him into her house for a cup of tea. Through interviews with dozens of those whose paths Ali crossed & many centrally involved in the planning & promotion of the event, Dave Hannigan has knitted together an enthralling narrative about one incredible boxer & the remarkable impact of his visit on the country of his ancestors.

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