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The Art Of Making Money: The Story Of A Master Counterfeiter (2009)

by Jason Kersten(Favorite Author)

3.88 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1592404464 (ISBN13: 9781592404469)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Gotham

review 1: When I borrowed this from the library, I thought it would be more about the actual counterfeiting and less of a biography of the counterfeiter, but it was still okay. Luckily, I picked it up as an audio book, because the author gets VERY overly dramatic at times, and as an audio book, it's a bit easier to take, possibly because it sounds like the narrator of the old "Lone Ranger" or "Rocky & Bullwinkle" shows. On the written page, it would be MUCH harder to take.There's really only one likable person in the book--the mentally ill mother. Art junior had a terrible childhood and I certainly felt bad for him then, but it's still hard to like him as an adult. He makes a lot of excuses, never seems to learn from his mistakes, and is just probably going to remain a criminal ... morethe rest of his life, in and out of jail. One unintentionally funny part was to discover that there really ARE people foolish enough to fall for the "Nigerian money" schemes that pepper my email, and that at least in this instance, they aren't innocent little grannies. They're budding--but dumb--criminals themselves. Poetic justice I guess. The author's narration gets really tiresome--especially when in the epilogue he tries to assert that the step-mother got an overly harsh sentence. She had a long history of criminal behavior including dealing in illegally obtained prescription drugs, so I personally thought she got off pretty lightly. The author might have felt sorry for the characters, but I didn't. It's much easier to like Frank Abignale ("Catch Me If You Can"), which is the comparison that will inevitably be made when the movie comes out, but the stories really aren't that similar.
review 2: I listened to it he audiobook version of the book, I think if I would have read it I would have gotten lost in the dialogue. For the nonfiction parts where he describes making and selling the money intrigued me the most and was the main reason I picked it up.Could have done less with the social side of the book and the hard knock life that Art had.Toby Keith said it best, "you need a little less talk and a lot more action." less

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