New Book On The Original Madoff, George Graham Rice – My Adventures With Your Money

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My Adventures With Your Money

In My Adventures with Your Money: George Graham Rice and the Golden Age of the Con Artist (St. Martin’s; on-sale November 3), T.D. Thornton paints a captivating portrait of an American obsessed with get-rich-quick schemes, from street corner rip-offs to elaborately scripted gambling hoaxes. Rice made market-manipulation killings of billions by inventing fictitious boom towns in Death Valley and exaggerating worthless mining claims throughout the West. As a shameless racetrack tipster, he cultivated a national following of 100,000 subscribers who paid for the privilege of his worthless tips. Vilified by securities regulators as the “Jackal of Wall Street,” Rice sparked riots in Manhattan’s financial district by perfecting the art of “bucket shop” trading with the sole purpose of robbing the public blind.

My Adventures with Your Money: George Graham Rice and the Golden Age of the Con Artist gives readers a real-life version of The Sting with one of America’s most vibrant conmen at its center. The book is getting great early praise, with Publishers Weekly hailing it as an “easy-to-read tale of survival during the earliest part of the 20th century [that] will make readers hungry for more grifts.

Advance Praise For My Adventures With Your Money

“Set against the backdrop of the Roaring ’20s and its subculture of con  men, this dazzling portrait traces Rice’s progress from small-time grifts such as inflating penny stocks to later  being known as the ‘Jackal of Wall Street.’ Thornton successfully transforms this unsavory character into a charming, irresistible anti-hero. This easy-to-read tale of survival during the earliest part of the 20th  century will make readers hungry for more grifts.” – Publishers Weekly

“This remarkable read of a man who swindled thousands of people out of  millions of dollars is for fans of con artists, stock market history, and the films Wall Street and The Wolf of Wall Street.” – Library Journal

“His story is an interesting tour through the early years of Wall Street and the often blurry lines between legal and illegal business practices. A good read for anyone interested in confidence men and the history of Wall Street.” – Kirkus Reviews

“In My Adventures with Your Money: George Graham Rice and the Golden Age of the Con Artist, T.D. Thornton shows us the heart and soul, such as they were, of one of our finest swindlers. This rollicking and highly entertaining portrait of George Graham Rice, a top-drawer hustler in the nation’s great era of con, never fails to fascinate. From doped-up thoroughbreds to bogus gold stocks, Rice’s money-making schemes roped in the suckers. But the big winners here are Thornton’s lucky readers.” – Doug J. Swanson, author of Blood Aces: The Wild Ride of Benny Binion, the Texas Gangster Who Created Vegas Poker

“Packed with rich period detail and written in a rollicking style that perfectly captures the sheer, unbounded vitality of its incorrigible subject, T.D. Thornton’s My Adventures with Your Money: George Graham Rice and the Golden Age of the Con Artist is a both vivid evocation of a uniquely colorful era in our nation’s past and a dazzling portrait of one of its most flamboyant figures–George Graham Rice, con-artist extraordinaire. Thanks to Thornton’s exuberant biography, the unaccountably forgotten Rice has been restored to his rightful place alongside the likes of P. T. Barnum and Charles Ponzi in the great rogues gallery of all-American hucksters, swindlers, and confidence men.” – Harold Schechter, author of The Mad Sculptor: The Model, the Maniac, and the Murder that Shook the Nation

About the author

T.D. THORNTON is the author of Not by a Long Shot-A Season at a Hard-Luck Horse Track, He is a freelance correspondent for the Boston Globe and has written for the New York Times and Slate. His creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry have been published in McSweeney’s, Jabberwock, the Raven Chronicles, Stolen Island Review and the Fossil Record. He lives in Boston.

My Adventures With Your Money

My Adventures with Your Money: George Graham Rice and the Golden Age of the Con Artist by T.D. Thornton

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