It was the golden age of eBay. Optimistic bidders went online to the worlds largest flea market in droves; ready to spend cash on everything from garden gnomes to Mercedes convertibles. Among them were art collectors willing to spend big money on unseen paintings; hoping to buy valuable pieces of art at below-market prices. EBay also attracted the occasional con artist unable to resist the temptation of abusing a system that prided itself on being "based on trust." Kenneth Walton -- once a lawyer bound by the ethics of his profession to uphold the law -- was seduced by just such a con artist and; eventually; became one himself. Ripped from the headlines of the New York Times; the first newspaper to break the story; Fake describes Waltons innocent beginnings as an online art-trading hobbyist and details the downward spiral of greed that ultimately led to his federal felony conviction. What started out as a satisfying exercise in reselling thrift store paintings for a profit in order to pay back student loans and mounting credit card debt soon became a fierce addiction to the subtle deception of luring unsuspecting bidders into overpaying for paintings of questionable origins. In a landscape peopled with colorful eccentrics hoping to score museum-quality paintings at bargain prices; Walton entered into a partnership with Ken Fetterman; an unslick (yet somehow very effective) con man. Over the course of eighteen months they managed to take in hundreds of thousands of dollars by selling forged paintings and bidding on their own auctions to drive up the prices. When their deception was discovered and made international headlines; Walton found himself stalked by reporters and federal agents while Fetterman went on the lam; sparking a nationwide FBI manhunt. His elaborate game of cat and mouse lasted nearly three years; until the feds caught up with him after a routine traffic violation and brought him to justice. In this sensational story of the seductive power of greed; Kenneth Walton breaks his silence for the first time and; in his own words; details the international scandal that forever changed the way eBay does business.
#1382512 in eBooks 2006-05-15 2006-05-15File Name: B000GCFXMW
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. In Shouting Distance from MarxismBy Ulrich GdhlerThis huge 1996 anthology contains seven papers by Stuart Hall; three interview and sixteen papers by the most famous former scholars of the Birmingham cultural studies centre. It documents Stuart Hallrsquo;s continuing reflection of changes in the political and cultural environment in the 1980s and 1990s; such as Thatcherism; Feminism; Post-Modernism and Post-Structuralism; Post-Colonialism and Post-Marxism. Stuart Hall preferred collective projects to academic fame. He preferred short papers to voluminous books. Most of his papers are very pedagogical and lack any gobbledygook.Hall was an integrating character and he often prefers fair balance of arguments instead of theoretical originality. He was strongly influenced by Louis Althusserrsquo;s theory of ldquo;interpellationrdquo; but searched for middle ways between Structuralist determinism and individual agency. Hall uses the works of Gramsci to find such a middle way. The anthology contains an introduction into the theoretical work of Antonio Gramsci which is worth reading.I was looking for insight concerning the relationship between Stuart Hall and Marxism. In Marx the proletariat appears in two different meanings. In the ldquo;Kapitalrdquo; the proletariat consists of those who are forced to sell their workforce. In this sense the proletariat has been growing. In the second meaning the ldquo;Arbeiterklasserdquo; was identified with the social and cultural phenomenon of the workers in factory work and industrialism. In this sense the working class has been weakened in Europe and the US due to global division of labour and cybernetic automation. Stuart Hall is very explicit (page 498) that Richard Hoggart; Raymond Williams and he were interested in ldquo;classrdquo; in the second sense. There is no discussion of the ldquo;Kapitalrdquo; and the contradictions of capitalism in the entire anthology. Hall starts to question the centrality of class and says that class; gender and race are equivalent. There are no answers to the question of how the new proletariat looks like under the conditions of 21th century capitalism.The word ldquo;dialecticrdquo; doesnrsquo;t appear in the index. Actually Marxist analyses typically differ from mainstream cultural studies by the focus on systemic contradictions and dialectics. Cultural Studies were first ingrained in British literary studies; acquired structuralism and then an Althusserian Structuralist Marxism before the post-structuralist turn. Hall explicitly says that cultural studies work in shouting distance from Marxism. I find a certain Anglo-centric view in this anthology. I was surprised by the lack of theoretical dispute with Adorno and Lukacs. There is no discussion of commodity fetishism and commodification; two key concepts in a Marxist approach to culture.Hall and his fellow Cultural Studies scholars in this anthology ritually caution against a mechanistic and reductionist Marxism. Unfortunately Hall doesnrsquo;t mention the culprit. Only once he mentions Nikolai Bukharinrsquo;s 1920 book on historic materialism. But even Lenin criticized this introduction because of the lack of dialectics. So who is the culprit? I adore the tradition of Marxist historiography in Britain and I would defend Christopher Hill; Rodney Hilton and Edward P Thompson against the accusation of reductionism and mechanistic thinking.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. A classic reference.By ceebeeHalls recent death brings back to light all of his fabulous work; both in his words and those of others. He will be a pivotal force in numerous disciplines for years to come; not the least of which because he had the courage to investigate everyday life as it is lived by the most of us.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Good; but dense.By Danielle CockburnCovers a lot of important and interesting topics. Format was as expected. The content was a bit heavy on the "scholastibabble"; and a lot of my classmates found it somewhat unapproachable as a result.