Cost: $5 for dues-paying Harvardwood members (and their guests); $15 for all others.
Advance registration is REQUIRED. No tickets will be sold at the door. THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT!
The doors will open at 6:30 pm (please do NOT arrive earlier) and the evening will begin with a reception with wine. The discussion will begin promptly at 7 pm.
Maria Konnikova's latest bestseller The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time is a fascinating and disturbing exploration of con artists, how they operate, and the psychology behind their success. Eric Larson called it "a startling and disconcerting read that should make you think twice every time a friend of a friend offers you the opportunity of a lifetime. . . And here’s the irony—the smarter you think you are, the more readily you’ll fall, which is why New Yorkers are some of the easiest marks."
Maria Konnikova is the NY Times bestselling author of The Confidence Game and Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes. She writes a regular column for the New Yorker about psychology and culture, and is the host of the storytelling podcast The Grift. Mastermind was an international success, translated into 19 languages. The Confidence Game was awarded the 2016 Robert P. Balles Prize in Critical Thinking by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Konnikova's writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New Republic, The Paris Review, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, and many more. She is a Harvard alum with a PhD in Psychology from Columbia University.
And we're very lucky to have, speaking with Maria Konnikova, award-winning journalist Walter Shapiro, the author of Hustling Hitler: The Jewish Vaudevillian Who Fooled the Fuhrer, which was published by Blue Rider Press last year. It is the story of his great-uncle, Freeman Bernstein, a vaudeville agent with a scam for every season. Bernstein was also a boxing promoter, race-fixer, carny operator, jewel smuggler and ultimately a con man who sold the Nazis bogus Canadian nickel. Shapiro is a columnist for Roll Call, a lecturer in political science at Yale and a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU. He also writes regularly for the Guardian. In covering the last 10 presidential campaigns, Shapiro has been on the staffs of USA Today, Esquire, Time, Newsweek and the Washington Post.
The Confidence Game will be available for purchase, and a booksigning will follow the discussion.
Special thanks to Fross Zelnick Lehrman & Zissu, and to Andy Goodwin and the Plymouth Hill Foundation.