True con artists - the Bernie Madoffs, the Clark Rockefellers, the Lance Armstrongs - are elegant, outsized personalities; artists of persuasion and exploiters of trust. They hold a deep, enigmatic fascination for us. But how do they do it? Why are they successful? Insightful and entertaining, The Confidence Game takes us into the world of the con, to examine not only why we believe in confidence artists but how our sense of truth can be manipulated by those around us.