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Scam!
Scam! focuses on one family of Irish Traveler con artists and, in the process, explores and details the full range of the ethic clans, uncovering America's most secret crime families in a true store of swindles, betrayal and murder. The book even provides intimate details about the Travelers' secret lifestyles while it outlines their wide range of scams against Americans. Movie rights to the book were sold to Disney Studios, but no movie has yet been produced.
488 pages, Paperback
First published December 31, 1969
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July 4, 2013
I went to grade school and part way through junior high with an extended family of American Gypsies or - as they prefer to refer to themselves: Travelers- after I moved from Texas to Memphis at the age of 12.
I loved these people and found them to be fascinating with their peculiar set of clan-imposed morals and Bizarro World notions of "right" and "wrong".
They all dropped out of school during the summer between the 8th and 9th grades and I never saw any of them again.
This book opened my eyes as to their probable futures.
This is as fascinating a portrait of an American subculture as misunderstood and as ostracized as you are likely to ever come across in this world or the next. The particular clan author Wright befriends (if that's even the correct term to describe what he actually does ...perhaps "infiltrates" is more apt a term) seems an uncharacteristically violent lot.
Still ...I can't recommend this book highly enough -especially to those interested in a people who dwell on the fringes of society but out in plain view to all the rest of us square-john "refs"/"gajos".
I loved these people and found them to be fascinating with their peculiar set of clan-imposed morals and Bizarro World notions of "right" and "wrong".
They all dropped out of school during the summer between the 8th and 9th grades and I never saw any of them again.
This book opened my eyes as to their probable futures.
This is as fascinating a portrait of an American subculture as misunderstood and as ostracized as you are likely to ever come across in this world or the next. The particular clan author Wright befriends (if that's even the correct term to describe what he actually does ...perhaps "infiltrates" is more apt a term) seems an uncharacteristically violent lot.
Still ...I can't recommend this book highly enough -especially to those interested in a people who dwell on the fringes of society but out in plain view to all the rest of us square-john "refs"/"gajos".
Displaying 1 of 1 review