Jeju Shinhwa World Robbery: Bulk of $13 Million Recovered

This is my third list for this sub. I hope you enjoy it.
ART THIEVES, FORGERS, SMUGGLERS.
The Art of the Steal by Christopher Mason. A true story about the auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s and how they conspired to cheat their clients out of millions of dollars.
The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace. The most expensive bottle of wine and the conflicting reports about its history. This is a book that would enchant wine conessi… conues… lovers.
The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World’s Largest Unsolved Art Theft by Ulrich Boser. Author Ulrich Boser looks at the unsolved art theft case of Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed by John Vaillant. Grant Hadwin, a logger-turned-activist, fells a unique 165 feet Sitka spruce in an act of protest. John Vaillant takes the readers into the heart of North America’s last great forest to find out why he did that.
Hitler’s Art Thief: Hildebrand Gurlitt, the Nazis, and the Looting of Europe’s Treasures by Susan Ronald. Hildebrand Gurlitt was an art thief, or as he put it himself, an ‘official dealer’ for Hitler and Goebbels. But he stole from the Jews and Nazis alike. This book was published after his hoard was recently (2013) discovered which created an international furor.
The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art by Matthew Hart. This book is about the art theft at Ireland’s Russborough House in 1986. The suspect, a gangster named Martin Cahill, played cat and mouse with police for years.
The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime by Miles Harvey. When you think about stealing some valuable art, do maps come to your mind? Then this book is for you. Gilbert Joseph Bland Jr. stole numerous centuries-old maps from research libraries in US and Canada.
I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century’s Greatest Forger by Frank Wynne. Han van Meegeren became so much adapt at forging Vermeer paintings that it is said that even professional experts would find it difficult to point out his works from the originals. He earned more than $50 million by selling his forgeries – and he even swindled the Nazis.
The Lizard King: The True Crimes and Passions of the World’s Greatest Reptile Smugglers by Bryan Christy. Reptile smuggling is a big “business”. The author, a federal agent, suspected a reptile business owner of being a major smuggler and he started investigating. It was not as simple as it sounds because at one point he was chased by a mother alligator and even bitten by a python.
The Lost Chalice: The Epic Hunt for a Priceless Masterpiece by Vernon Silver. A 2500 year old cup made by the Greek master Euphronios which depicted the fall of Troy gets stolen and sold (along with 3 other such vessels). Then due to the questionable practice of some art dealers, no one can track down its last known owner.
The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr. With nothing better to do, the author embarks on a journey to discover a Caravaggio painting which was lost to time two hundred years ago.
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett. John Charles Gilkey stole rare books not because he wanted to make profit as most thieves do, but because he loved books. I guess if you want to call yourself a book-reader but don’t actually want to say… read a book, you could just steal them and show them off to your friends. But who are we to question the wisdom of “booklovers”, right?
The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession by Susan Orlean. If you thought that stealing maps is a weird “job” to have, how about stealing a rare breed of flower? We all know about the Tulipomania that gripped Netherlands in the 1630s. But this is a modern tale, and the book is perhaps one of the most popular ones on this list.
Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures by Robert K. Wittman, John Shiffman. This book is about Robert K. Wittman, FBI’s founder of the Art Crime Team and his undercover missions around the world to rescue various pieces of stolen art.
Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury. You could have a Jackson Pollock lying around in your basement, but if you can’t prove that the piece is real, you might as well use it as a table cloth (I might have exaggerated there a bit, but you get the point). John Myatt, a struggling artist, and John Drewe, a conman who knew the importance of Provenance in the art world, duped many people and museums by creating a fake paper trial that seemed to prove that the art was a real thing and not a forgery. So much so that the experts believe that there might still be some fake paintings created by Myatt displayed in prominent places as the real thing.
The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece by Edward Dolnick. Dolnick writes about the theft of Edvard Munch’s The Scream from the National Gallery in Oslo in 1994 and the subsequent investigation that took place to track it down.
Selling Hitler by Robert Harris In mid-eighties, Hitler’s diaries were “discovered” and many experts fell for the con. The backpeddling many did when it was revealed that the diaries were not real is really amusing to read about.
Shell Games: Rogues, Smugglers, and the Hunt for Nature’s Bounty by Craig Welch. This book is about the poaching of a larger-than-life clam – a Geoduck, to be precise, and the subsequent chase from the wildlife police to nab the poacher.
Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers and the Looting of the Ancient World by Roger Atwood. This book provides a sweeping history of thefts of various priceless antiques.
Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World’s Most Coveted Masterpiece by Noah Charney. The twelve panel oil-painting of the Mystic Lamb is the most frequently stolen artwork in the world. It was stolen 13 times. One wonders whether they could have guarded it a little better after the first couple of times, you know. Anyway, this book describes the events of each theft.
Stolen World: A Tale of Reptiles, Smugglers, and Skulduggery by Jennie Erin Smith. Two reptile smugglers compete against each other to conquer the illegal trade for themselves. The funny thing is, the Zoos stood against them in the courts, but they had no problem buying rare fauna from the two smugglers, sometimes simultaneously.
Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession, and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California by Frances Dinkelspiel. A massive fire destroyed wines worth $250 million in a California warehouse, making it the largest destruction of wine in history. It was done by a conman named Mark Anderson, who rented storage space at the same warehouse. This book tells why he did that and also goes into the surprisingly bloody history of wine trade in California. (reads well with cranberry juice).
Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa by R. A. Scotti. On August 21, 1911, a man walked out of the Louvre with the Mona Lisa tucked inside his coat (should have painted it bigger, eh Vinci?). I am not going to spoil this book for anyone. Read it if you want to know whether Mona Lisa was recovered or was lost to time forever.
CARTELS, GANGS, UNDERWORLD.
American Desperado: My Life --- From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset by Jon Roberts, Evan Wright. Jon Roberts, who starred in documentary Cocaine Cowboys tells his story to the journalist Evan Wright in this book. Roberts smuggled drugs to Miami for the Medellin Cartel (which will feature many times in this category).
At the Devil’s Table: The Untold Story of the Insider Who Brought Down the Cali Cartel by William C. Rempel. This is Narcos Season 3, basically. Remember the family guy who gets involved with the Cali Cartel and mops around for the whole season even though he had an unbelievably hot wife who was clearly out of his league? That character was based on Rempel. And if I must say so, the book is more compelling than that season of Narcos. Nothing can beat Agent Pena, though.
Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob by Dick Lehr, Gerard O’Neill. The story of James ‘Whitey’ Bulger – the head of the Irish Mob in Boston - who became an informant for the FBI and chaos ensued. Depp plays Whitey Bulger in the movie adaptation with a soggy tortilla glued to his face as make-up.
Blow: How a Small -Town Bay Made $100 Million with the Medellin Cocaine Cartel and Lost it All by Bruce Porter. Another book where Johnny Depp plays the main character in the movie adaptation. This book is about George Jung, who after meeting Carlos Lehder, started selling cocaine in the United States through Medellin Cartel.
Cocaine Diaries: A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare by Paul Keany, Jeff Farrell. Paul Keany was caught smuggling half-a-million euro worth of cocaine into Venezuela. He was sentenced to 8 years in prison. Now, prisons everywhere aren’t exactly fun places to be, but Los Teques where Keany was incarcerated was nothing short of hell on earth.
Confessions of a Yakuza by Junichi Saga. Junichi Saga was a doctor by profession. A patient, who was a former Yakuza, recounted his life story before him. Saga recorded the conversations, and broke doctor-patient confidentiality by writing this book.
Doctor Dealer: The Rise and Fall of an All-American Boy and His Multimillion-Dollar Cocaine Empire by Mark Bowden. A dentist named Larry Lavin builds the foundation for a cocaine empire in the United States.
Donnie Brasco by Joseph D. Pistone, Richard Woodley. Joseph D. Pistone, an FBI agent, goes undercover for six years to infiltrate the Mafia. Do watch the movie too, it is Depp’s last movie without weird make-up.
El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency by Ioan Grillo. Journalist Ioan Grillo has written, arguably, the definitive book on Mexican drug cartels. Why he is still alive is anybody’s guess.
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh. Venkatesh, who was a sociology grad student at the time, infiltrated one of Chicago’s most notorious gangs. This is one of a kind type of book.
Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano. This book is about the Italian Crime Network called Camorra in Naples, Italy. Due to his intensive investigative journalism which exposed lot of insider information about the crime syndicate, author Saviano still has to live under constant police protection.
The Good Mothers: The True Story of the Women Who Took on the World’s Most Powerful Mafia by Alex Perry. This is a recent book, where the author Alex Perry looks inside the ruthless Calabrian Mafia of Italy and three women who want to save their own and their children’s lives. This is a fascinating and courageous look into an aspect of the Mafia which is often overlooked by most.
Hunting El Chapo: The Inside Story of the American Lawman Who Captured the World’s Most Wanted Drug-Lord by Andrew Hogan, Douglas Century. Remember when Joaquin Guzman was caught for the first time and then he escaped and then he was caught again for good? Yes? Then read this one. But this book only focuses on the operation that nabbed him for the first time. I must warn you though – the author, Andrew Hogan – is really really in love with himself and it seeps into his writing.
The Infiltrator: My Secret Life Inside the Dirty Banks Behind Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel by Robert Mazur. Mazur went undercover and actually became a money launderer for Pablo Escobar. This book is more about how bankers actively helped to launder the drug money and how Mazur helped to bring them down.
Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw by Mark Bowden. This is the best book about tracking and eventually killing Pablo Escobar. And as Walter Jr. pointed out to Walter White, it focuses on the good guys, not the bad ones. Good companion book to Pablo Escobar: My Father written by Escobar’s son.
Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America’s Strangest Jail by Rusty Young. The author stays inside San Pedro jail for months with a drug smuggler to chronicle his tale. This is one of the most popular books written on cocaine smuggling.
McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by Misha Glenny. This is a thorough investigation into organized crime worldwide which accounts for 1/5th of total GDP of the world. This book would please readers who are into extensively researched true-crime history books, not so much a casual reader (inb4 - I just read 5 pages of McMafia and wow… just wow).
Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade by Edward Bunker. Edward Bunker had had an eventful life. Incarceration for two and a half decades, being on FBI’s most wanted list, and being a crime novelist. This is his autobiography.
Mr. Nice by Howard Marks. Howard Marks started dealing dope in small quantities while he was studying at Oxford – as you do – and then eventually graduated to dealing it in tons (what the hell was he studying there? Oh, philosophy). This is his fascinating story.
Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers by Anabel Hernandez. Yet another book that resulted in the author getting death threats. This proves the old cliché true that the pen is mightier than the sword; until the sword comes down and cuts your neck. That’s why the author has to live under constant protection.
Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright. Any aspiring drug lords should read this instruction manual. Just kidding. Wainwright goes deep into the functioning of various drug cartels and at the end also comes up with a plan to defeat them.
News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Little known author tries his hand at true-crime. Pablo Escobar kidnapped 10 journalists when he was on the run from the authorities. This book revolves around that event.
The Night it Rained Guns: Unravelling the Purulia Arms Drop Conspiracy by Chandan Nandy. On a December night in 1995, someone airdropped three weapons-laden wooden pallets over Purulia, West Bengal. Who did it and why? This book tells the story about one of India’s greatest ever security breaches.
No Angel: My Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels by Jay Dobyns, Nils Johnson-Shelton. Dobyns was the first federal agent to infiltrate the inner circle of the notorious biker gang. This is his story.
Pablo Escobar: My Father by Juan Pablo Escobar. Juan Pablo is an architect and lives and practices his trade in Argentina. Even though Pablo was his father, Juan does not try to justify his actions even a little bit. This is one of the best books written on Pablo Escobar.
The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe. Sister Ping, leader of the Chinese underworld in the US, earned $40 million a year smuggling people from China. Told from the viewpoints of gangsters, investigators, and poor immigrants alike, this book provides a unique window into the world of human smuggling.
Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City, Was Extorted out of Millions by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in FBI History by Michael D. Blutrich. I am disappointed that they went with FBI instead of Federal Bureau of Investigation in the title. Should have made it longer. Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City on the 34th Street Just Opposite the Starbucks, Was Extorted out of 4.54 Millions and 55 Cents Plus Taxes by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in Federal Bureau of Investigation History by Michael Dostoyevsky Blutrich
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein. The author, working as a reporter in Japan, writes about the seedy underbelly of crime in the country.
The Untouchables by Eliot Ness, Oscar Fraley. Where’s Nitty? He’s in the car. Great movie. How Eliot Ness and his team started the downward spiral in criminal career of Al Capone. A somewhat embellished account was also written in the book, but nonetheless, it is a gripping tale.
Veerappan: Chasing the Brigand by K. Vijay Kumar. Koose Muniswamy Veerappan was the last big outlaw of India. A sandalwood smuggler who lived in the forest to evade the police, Veerappan killed hundreds of policemen and civilians. K. Vijay Kumar, the officer who led the task force that ultimately brought down the brigand, is the author of this book.
Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family by Nicholas Pileggi. I’m funny how, I mean funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you? Goodfellas is perhaps the best Mafia movie ever made, so read it in his own words why Pileggi might fold under questioning.
Zero Zero Zero by Roberto Saviano, Virginia Jewiss. This Saviano guy must have a death wish. But as a handsome list-writer once eloquently said, “If bitten already by a King Cobra, what difference it makes if you French kiss a Black Mamba?” Since the publication of his book on the Italian crime syndicate, Saviano has to live under constant police protection. So to make sure they don’t slack off, he wrote a book on Cocaine Cartel, this time acquiring lots of admirers in Latin America.
CONMEN, IMPOSTORS.
The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter by Jason Kersten. The Art of making money is to make other people work for you; not the other way round. But more scrupulous method of making money would be to counterfeit it. Art Williams did exactly that.
Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake by Frank W. Abagnale. Maybe the most popular book on this list, Abagnale Jr.’s book is not to be missed even if you have watched the movie starring the actor who had sex with a bear (no, not Tormund).
Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock. One “Dr.” John R. Brinkley, set-up a medical practice to surgically insert goat glands in human testicles to restore their fading sex drive. I am not joking, this happened.
Conman: A Master Swindler’s Own Story by J. R. Weil, W. T. Brannon. Known as “Yellow Kid” Weil was a master conman, who duped public of more than $8 million 100 years ago. He’s called by many as the greatest conman of all time (second to the companies that charge service fees on the internet, of course).
Eyeing the Flash: The Making of a Carnival Con Artist by Peter Fenton. Fenton was a math student until he turned into a carnival con artist. How many bananas he stole from the monkeys? How many bales of potatoes from the elephants? Read this book to find out.
Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England by Sarah Wise. If you have any annoying friends who romanticize the Victorian era and say that they would have liked to live there, tell them to read this book and get back to you after that.
The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor by Mark Seal. This is the true story of one of the greatest impostors of all time. The man could have impersonated a chihuahua if he wanted to.
The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower by James Francis Johnson. Viktor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower not once, but twice. I still have the relevant papers that my great grandfather left us. I’m going to shift it to Nauru or Detroit.
The Mark Inside: A Perfect Swindle, a Cunning Revenge, and a Small History of the Big Con by Amy Reading. This is a revenge story of a man who sets out to con the conmen who conned him twice. Unfortunately, the book could have been written better, but it is still worth having a look at.
Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud by Elizabeth Greenwood. I once tried playing dead in a meeting when asked about the progress on my project. But there are people who fake their death for lesser gains, such as insurance fraud and debt fraud. Author Elizabeth Greenwood journeys into the dark world of death fraud to find out more.
Ponzi’s Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend by Mitchell Zuckoff. Charles Ponzi was so successful in duping people that we have immortalized his name by terming such swindles after him. At one point, he was raking in $2 millions a week. How many weeks would it take you to earn 2 million dollars at your current income? (sorry, that got heavy fast. It hurt me too).
A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud by Karl Sabbagh. One botanist claimed that some species of plants on the islands south of Scotland survived the last Ice Age. Another botanist doubted him. This might not sound like a big fraud if you are not into plants, but believe me when I say that the 2 botanists who just read this threw their phones away in disgust and disbelief.
Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest by Gregg Olsen. A quack doctor named Linda Hazard developed a technique called “fasting treatment”. The story focuses on two sisters who fell for the quack’s assurances that they would be cured of all the diseases - real or imagined. This book is quite infuriating to read. Hazard was a despicable human being.
Swindled: From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee – The Dark History of the Food Cheats by Bee Wilson. Wilson looks from ancient Rome to current times for food frauds. And she finds them aplenty (companion read - while having a nice snack).
A Treasury of Deception: Liars, Misleaders, Hoodwinkers, and the Extraordinary True Stories of History’s Greatest Hoaxes, Fakes and Frauds by Michael Farquhar. This is a good bathroom book about fakers through history.
The Woman Who Wasn’t There: The True Story of an Incredible Deception by Robin Gaby Fisher, Angelo J. Guglielmo Jr. Have you heard about Tania Head? If you haven’t, I urge you to skip this book. Tania Head duped survivors of 9/11 and the whole world alike into believing that she was one of the survivors from the South Tower of World Trade Center. I feel enraged just by typing this. So just read this book if you want to know more about her. There are a couple of documentaries out there too.
HACKERS.
The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Clifford Stoll. Long before internet became a place for cat memes, Cliff Stoll was working at a research lab as a systems manager. One day he found 75 cents of accounting error. This made him alert that an unauthorized person was logging into the system. Thus began his lone effort of tracking down the spy.
Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell by Phil Lapsley. Before there was internet, or even personal computers, mobsters and teenagers hacked the telephone system.
Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker by Kevin D. Mitnick, William L. Simon. The book tells the story of one of the best hackers of all times, Kevin Mitnick, and his cat and mouse game with the FBI.
The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History by David Enrich. A group of bankers manipulated daily interest rates just a fraction here and there on loans worth trillions of dollars and made some serious cash for themselves. This book also rocks one of the ugliest book covers of 2017.
MUTINEERS, PIRATES, OUTLAWS.
Batavia’s Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History’s Bloodiest Mutiny by Mike Dash. I was torn whether to include this book in the list as the history of Batavia’s mutiny is littered with corpses. But as the focus is on the mutiny, I am going to keep it here. This event could give the Medusa’s raft a run for its money.
The Floating Brothel: The Extraordinary True Story of an Eighteenth-Century Ship and its Cargo of Female Convicts by Sian Rees. Poor girls in England, most of who were petty thieves, were given a chance to sail to Botany Bay in Australia to create a new life for themselves and the male population of New South Wales. But the real story happened at the sea on board the ship Lady Julian.
The Last Outlaws: The Lives and Legends of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid by Thom Hatch. Butch: What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful. Guard: People kept robbing it. Butch: Small price to pay for beauty. The book might not be full of memorable dialogues as the movie, but if you want to know more about the legendary outlaws, give this book a chance.
Lost Paradise: From Mutiny on the Bounty to a Modern-Day Legacy of Sexual Mayhem, the Dark Secrets of Pitcairn Island Revealed by Kathy Marks. Mutiny of the Bounty is perhaps the most infamous of mutinies that occurred at sea. Even after the event and hundreds of years later, the descendants of Fletcher Christian and his sailors continue to live a crime-filled life like their forefathers on Pitcairn Island.
The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd by Richard Zacks. This book will change your perception of Captain Kidd, that’s for sure.
To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West by Mark Lee Gardner. This non-fiction book concentrates on Sheriff Pat Garrett’s chase in pursuit of the bandit Billy the Kid. If you like reading westerns, this one and The Last Outlaws are not to be missed.
Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates by David Cordingly. Cordingly takes a look at life among the pirates. Some of your romanticism would be squashed, but there were some good things about being a pirate too. Life among the pirates was neither black nor white; it was beige.
POLITICAL CRIMES
Arms and the Dudes: How Three Stoners from Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History by Guy Lawson. Three kids won a 300 million dollar contract – legitimately – I must add, to supply ammunition to the Afghanistan military. They had no money, but still they almost pulled it off. I don’t know, read this book, and if you’re a US citizen, visit the websites mentioned in the book, see if they are still doing business the same way, and if you want, you can become a supplier to the army too. Don’t forget to send me my cut (the movie War Dogs was trash).
The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair by Sam Roberts. Even if you’re not a United Statian of American (USians?), chances are you might have read at least something about the execution of the Rosenberg couple as spies. This is probably the best book about the subject.
Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Man Behind Them: How America Went to War in Iraq by Bob Drogin. How many weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq? If your answer is “what’s that?” then congratulations, you’re not unlike one of your former presidents. Who told the USians that there were WMDs with Saddam? Curveball.
The Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. Perkins was an economic hitman, who at the instruction of US intelligence agencies and giant corporations cajoled and blackmailed other country leaders to serve US foreign policy and award lucrative contracts to American businesses (now that job has been transferred to the White House).
A Kim Jong – Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator’s Rise to Power by Paul Fischer. Say you want to make a big movie for your country. But there is no one in your country who can handle such an ambitious project. What do you do? Hire some talent from other country? But you’re Kim Jong – Il. Oh. Then you just kidnap them, and force them to make the glorious movie of yours. Read this book. It’s pretty absurd (the movie they eventually made for Kim was utter shit. The Room would look like Gone with the Wind compared to that abomination).
The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World’s Most Dangerous Secrets… And How We Could Have Stopped Him by Douglas Frantz, Catherine Collins. One day a man Abdul Qadeer Khan caught a plane to Pakistan from Europe. With him he had blueprints of the mechanism that could prepare weapons grade Uranium that he had stolen from the lab he worked at in the last 3 years. He would make the first atomic bomb for Pakistan with that information. Then he sold the tech to stable countries like Iran, North Korea and Libya. How can someone get away with stealing such powerful information? Read this book to find out.
Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America by Annie Jacobsen. This is a pretty controversial topic that has only gained wider acknowledgement in recent decades. Read this book to know in detail how bogus the claims of justice being served to the perpetrators of the Holocaust were. Basically, if you were a scientist, you were very likely to be acquitted from any War Crimes allegations.
The Real Odessa: How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina by Uki Goni. How did most of the Nazis who managed to escape from Germany ended up in South America? Read about the collusion of various entities and institutions that made it possible in this book.
The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell: A Dyslexic Traitor, an Unbreakable Code, and the FBI’s Hunt for America’s Stolen Secrets by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee. This is the true story of a mole in FBI, how he attempted to sell classified information and how FBI tried to track him down.
ROBBERIES, HEISTS.
Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts by Julian Rubinstein. If there is one thief in this list that I admire, it is without a doubt, Attila Ambrus. Ambrus was known as a gentleman thief, who would ask – no, request - the teller to fill his bag with money. If you read this book, it would be hard for you to dislike Attila even though he was a thief.
Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief by Bill Mason, Lee Gruenfeld. Bill Mason looted many famous personalities in his long career as a jewel thief. In this book he tells how he did it.
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk W. Johnson. Do you know there are people whose hobby is fly tying? The feathery thing that you attach to the hook to catch fish? But these are not your average fly tiers. They use feathers from exotic birds to create different ties whose total cost could run in thousands of dollars. Moreover, many of the most coveted birds are either protected or extinct. So one night a man named Edwin Rist broke into Tring museum and took hundreds of bird skins, some that belonged to Darwin, to fuel his hobby and even getting rich by selling precious feathers to other tiers. Don’t miss this book.
Finders Keepers: The Story of a Man Who Found $1 Million by Mark Bowden. Who hasn’t dreamt of finding a big bag of money? It couldn’t have happened to a more clueless person. Joey Coyle, to be exact.
Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History by Scott Andrew Selby. The theft from Antwerp that still raises many questions.
Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde by Jeff Guinn. The truth is not that romantic.
The Great Pearl Heist: London’s Greatest Thief and Scotland Yard’s Hunt for the World’s Most Valuable Necklace by Molly Caldwell Crosby. Pearls, more valuable than the Hope Diamond, are stolen by thieves in Edwardian London.
The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton. My favorite Crichton book. Stealing gold from a running train! Watch the movie too that stars the great Sean Connery.
Heist: The Oddball Crew Behind the $17 Million Loomis Fargo Theft by Jeff Diamant. How hard is it to steal 17 million dollars? As far as these thieves were concerned, not much. Getting away with it was another thing altogether. The movie was pretty average, I think.
Into the Blast: The True Story of DB Cooper by Skipp Porteous, Robert Blevins. Is Tommy Wiseau DB Cooper? If only that was true. Read the book but don’t expect any clear-cut answers (I think most people would agree that the clumsy bastard died after he jumped from the plane).
A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York by Timothy J. Gilfoyle. True story of George Appo, a pickpocket living in nineteenth-century New York.
Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History by Ben Mezrich. A guy steals moon rocks from NASA and then had sex on them with his girlfriend (how the hell is that comfortable?)
The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel. The last hermit was not a hermit in true sense. He didn’t rely on land to feed himself. He stole from the nearby community. Before someone says I have spoiled the book for them, it is revealed in the first chapter that he is a thief.
WHITE COLLAR CRIMES.
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou. The Steve Jobs impersonator, Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of Theranos, and her old boyfriend, Sunny, are some of the most vile people that I have come across while reading about corporate crime. This is one of the best books that I have read this year.
Den of Thieves by James B. Stewart. This is probably the most famous book written about those Wall Street scoundrels.
Empire of Deception: The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation by Dean Jobb. The story of Leo Koretz, who created one of the longest running Ponzi schemes in the 1920s Chicago.
The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald. Mark Whitacre becomes an FBI informant against his own corporation. But as time goes by, the FBI starts to realize that Mark is not as truthful as he seems to be, and he has his own agenda (they made a movie with Matt Damon).
Octopus: Sam Israel, the Secret Market, and Wall Street’s Wildest Con by Guy Lawson. Sam Israel’s hedge fund was making heavy losses. So naturally, he fabricated fake returns to fool the investors. Then he heard about a secret market from where he could convert his millions into billions. That’s how he lost the last 150 million dollars of his invertors’ money.
Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice by Bill Browder. Only thing you are going to learn from this book is don’t do business in Russia.
The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind. Bethany McLean asked one simple question in her article when everyone else was going gaga over Enron. “What does Enron actually do?” Nobody knew. Even Enron couldn’t give a specific answer. They were not just committing accounting fraud; they were looting ordinary people by creating fake shortage of electricity and driving the prices high. The documentary is worth watching too.
Stung: The Incredible Obsession of Brian Molony by Gary Stephen Ross. The guy Molony debited huge amounts of money from the bank he worked at to feed his gambling addiction. Oh, and he took the money in other people’s name who held huge accounts there. This is one of the best true-crime books that I have ever read.
Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way by Jon Krakauer. You know the man who builds schools in remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan? Great guy, right? Krakauer doesn’t think so. And he’ll tell you why in this short book.
The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust by Diana B. Henriques. 65 billion dollars. That’s the amount that Madoff swindled from people through decades of fraud. I think I can buy a small island country with this much money. The idiot is in jail though. I don’t know, maybe after a couple of billion, skip to a country with no extradition treaty and live the rest of your life without the fear of being getting caught? But then, these types of people don’t know when to stop.
OTHER.
American Roulette: How I Turned the Odds Upside Down --- My Wild Twenty-Five-Year Ride Ripping Off World’s Casinos by Richard Marcus. The guy ripped-off casinos all over the world by stealing gaming chips while maintaining an illusion of a highroller to lend his eventual take required legitimacy.
Breaking the Rock: The Great Escape from Alcatraz by Jolene Babyak. Written by the daughter of a guard at Alcatraz, this book tells the story of the infamous escape from the prison island. Don’t forget to watch the classic movie too.
Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich. The movie 21 was based on this book. But if you want to know the real story, without the whitewashing, you have no choice but to read this book.
Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy by Kevin Bales. Kevin Bales estimates that there are 27 million people worldwide who live as slaves, right now. And yes, slavery still exists in United States of America in case you were wondering. This is a depressing book.
Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in a Man’s Prison by T. J. Parsell. Rape in prison is absolutely overlooked almost everywhere. Read this book if you can endure reading about helplessness page after page.
Hotel K: The Shocking Inside Story of Bali’s Most Notorious Jail by Kathryn Bonella. Prison systems in developing world differ from the developed one in one regard that the guards and officials there are more corrupt and hence are likely to look the other way when something bad is going down amongst the inmates. Kerobokan Jail in Bali is one of the worst among those.
The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison by Pete Earley. The author interviewed inmates from Leavenworth Prison for two years. The book is the result of that labor.
The Laundrymen: Inside the World’s Third Largest Business by Jeffrey Robinson. I have a perfect idea to launder money. Laser Tag! Robinson looks at the third largest business in the world. The book was published a while ago, but still hasn’t lost most of its relevancy.
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer. Jon releases the Krakauer on one of the most relevant subjects of today. Rapes in colleges. These institutes would do anything to sweep things under the rug to maintain the illusion of clean image in the public eye.
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover. The author worked as a prison guard for a year at one of the most notorious prisons of the United States. This book is about his experience.

The following gives you an overview of relevant movies. There are 138 categories. You can use this as a challenge: make sure that you have watched at least one film from each category.
(1) 80s action First Blood (1982) Conan the Barbarian (1982) The Terminator (1984) Commando (1985) Top Gun (1986) Predator (1987) RoboCop (1987) Die Hard (1988) Bloodsport (1988) The Killer (1989)
(2) Black comedy Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) Withnail & I (1987) Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) Man Bites Dog (1992) Happiness (1998) Snatch (2000) Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) In Bruges (2008) Wild Tales (2014) Ingrid Goes West (2017)
(3) Coen brothers Blood Simple. (1984) Raising Arizona (1987) Miller's Crossing (1990) Barton Fink (1991) Fargo (1996) The Big Lebowski (1998) O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) A Serious Man (2009) Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
(4) Film noir The Maltese Falcon (1941) Double Indemnity (1944) Laura (1944) Mildred Pierce (1945) The Lost Weekend (1945) The Big Sleep (1946) Out of the Past (1947) They Live by Night (1948) The Third Man (1949) In a Lonely Place (1950) Night and the City (1950) Ace in the Hole (1951) Rififi (1955) Kiss Me Deadly (1955) Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
(5) French New Wave The 400 Blows (1959) Breathless (1960) A Woman Is a Woman (1961) Léon Morin, Priest (1961) Jules and Jim (1962) Vivre Sa Vie (1962) Contempt (1963) Band of Outsiders (1964) The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) Pierrot le Fou (1965) Two or Three Things I Know About Her... (1967) Weekend (1967) My Night at Maud's (1969)
(6) Left Bank Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) Last Year at Marienbad (1961) La Jetée (1962) Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962) Le Bonheur (1965)
(7) Richard Linklater Dazed and Confused (1993) Before Sunrise (1995) Waking Life (2001) Before Sunset (2004) A Scanner Darkly (2006) Before Midnight (2013)
(8) Serial killer Henry (1986) The Silence of the Lambs (1991) Se7en (1995) Zodiac (2007)
(9) Screwball comedy It Happened One Night (1934) The Awful Truth (1937) Bringing Up Baby (1938) His Girl Friday (1940) The Philadelphia Story (1940) The Lady Eve (1941)
(10) Vigilante films Dirty Harry (1971) Straw Dogs (1971) Death Wish (1974) Falling Down (1993) Walking Tall (2004) John Wick (2014)
(11) Terrence Malick Badlands (1973) Days of Heaven (1978) The Thin Red Line (1998) The New World (2005) The Tree of Life (2011) Knight of Cups (2015)
(12) Drugs Trainspotting (1996) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) Requiem for a Dream (2000) Traffic (2000) Blow (2001) Maria Full of Grace (2004)
(13) Buster Keaton Sherlock Jr. (1924) The General (1926) Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) The Cameraman (1928) Our Hospitality (1928)
(14) Disaster Airport (1970) Apollo 13 (1995) Twister (1996) Deep Impact (1998) The Day After Tomorrow (2004) Deepwater Horizon (2016)
(15) Neo-noir Point Blank (1967) Chinatown (1974) Thief (1981) L.A. Confidential (1997) Sin City (2005) Drive (2011) Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
(16) Cars & Racing Vanishing Point (1971) Gone in 60 Seconds (1974) Death Race 2000 (1975) Rush (2013) The Fast and the Furious (2001) Days of Thunder (1990) Speed Racer (2008)
(17) 1920s Greed (1924) Battleship Potemkin (1925) Metropolis (1927) Sunrise (1927) Napoleon (1927) The Crowd (1928)
(18) Adventure The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) Deliverance (1972) Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) Master and Commander (2003) Apocalypto (2006) Life of Pi (2012) Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)
(19) Genius Rain Man (1988) Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993) Good Will Hunting (1997) A Beautiful Mind (2001)
(20) South Korea Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2003) Oldboy (2003) 3-Iron (2004) Mother (2009) I Saw the Devil (2010)
(21) Ingmar Bergman The Seventh Seal (1957) Wild Strawberries (1957) Through a Glass Darkly (1961) Winter Light (1963) Persona (1966) Cries & Whispers (1972) Scenes from a Marriage (1973) Autumn Sonata (1978) Fanny and Alexander (1982)
(22) Billy Wilder Sunset Boulevard (1950) Some Like It Hot (1959) The Apartment (1960) One, Two, Three (1961) Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
(23) Comedy-drama One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) Being There (1979) My Dinner with Andre (1981) The Breakfast Club (1985) The Fisher King (1991) Groundhog Day (1993) Forrest Gump (1994) Buffalo '66 (1998) The Truman Show (1998) The Man Without a Past (2002) Lost in Translation (2003) Little Miss Sunshine (2006) Frances Ha (2012) Toni Erdmann (2016)
(24) Drama Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) Gone with the Wind (1939) The Grapes of Wrath (1940) All About Eve (1950) A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) From Here to Eternity (1953) On the Waterfront (1954) Splendor in the Grass (1961) Midnight Cowboy (1969) À Nos Amours (1983) Vagabond (1985) The Piano (1993) La Haine (1995) Secrets & Lies (1996) The Ice Storm (1997) The Celebration (1998) All About My Mother (1999) Ratcatcher (1999) Amores Perros (2000) La Ciénaga (2001) Morvern Callar (2002) 25th Hour (2002) Elephant (2003) Mysterious Skin (2004) Babel (2006) 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) Wendy and Lucy (2008) The Social Network (2010) Incendies (2010) Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) Shame (2011) The Hunt (2012) The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) Winter Sleep (2014) Mommy (2014) Son of Saul (2015) Room (2015) Spotlight (2015) Manchester by the Sea (2016) Paterson (2016) Columbus (2017) The Florida Project (2017)
(25) James Bond Dr. No (1962) Goldfinger (1964) Casino Royale (2006) Skyfall (2012) The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) GoldenEye (1995)
(26) Romantic comedy Roman Holiday (1953) Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) The Princess Bride (1987) When Harry Met Sally... (1989) There’s Something About Mary (1998) Amélie (2001) Punch-Drunk Love (2002) Sideways (2004) The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) 500 Days of Summer (2009)
(27) Robert Bresson Diary of a Country Priest (1951) A Man Escaped (1956) Pickpocket (1959) Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) Mouchette (1967) The Devil, Probably (1977) L'Argent (1983)
(28) Political thriller Z (1969) Three Days of the Condor (1975) All the President's Men (1976) Blow Out (1981) Patriot Games (1992) The Lives of Others (2006) The Ides of March (2011) The Post (2017)
(29) Parody/spoof Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) Dark Star (1974) Airplane! (1980) The Princess Bride (1987) Spaceballs (1987) The Naked Gun (1988) Hot Shots! (1991) Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) Austin Powers (1997) Galaxy Quest (1999) Black Dynamite (2009)
(30) Orson Welles Citizen Kane (1941) Touch of Evil (1958) The Trial (1962) Chimes at Midnight (1965) F for Fake (1973)
(31) Pixar Toy Story (1995) Finding Nemo (2003) Ratatouille (2007) WALL·E (2008) Up (2009) Inside Out (2015) Coco (2017)
(32) Pre-Code Hollywood The Blue Angel (1930) Frankenstein (1931) Freaks (1932) King Kong (1933) Duck Soup (1933) The Thin Man (1934)
(33) Superhero Superman (1978) X-Men (2000) Spider-Man (2002) The Dark Knight (2008) Iron Man (2008) The Avengers (2012) Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) Logan (2017)
(34) War All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) The Longest Day (1962) The Train (1964) The Deer Hunter (1978) Apocalypse Now (1979) Das Boot (1981) Platoon (1986) Saving Private Ryan (1998) Black Hawk Down (2001) Dunkirk (2017)
(35) Stanley Kubrick Paths of Glory (1957) Lolita (1962) Dr. Strangelove (1964) 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) A Clockwork Orange (1971) Barry Lyndon (1975) The Shining (1980) Full Metal Jacket (1987) Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
(36) Surrealism Entr'acte (1924) The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928) L'Étoile de Mer (1928) An Andalusian Dog (1929) L'Age d'Or (1930) The Blood of a Poet (1930) Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)
(37) Western Stagecoach (1939) The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) My Darling Clementine (1946) High Noon (1952) Shane (1953) The Searchers (1956) Rio Bravo (1959) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) The Wild Bunch (1969) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) Dances with Wolves (1990) Unforgiven (1992) Meek's Cutoff (2010)
(38) Spaghetti Western A Fistful of Dollars (1964) For a Few Dollars More (1965) Django (1966) The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) The Great Silence (1968) Duck, You Sucker! (1971)
(39) Swashbuckler Captain Blood (1935) The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) The Sea Hawk (1940) The Four Musketeers (1974) The Three Musketeers (1993) The Mask of Zorro (1998)
(40) Werner Herzog Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) Stroszek (1977) La Soufrière (1977) Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) Fitzcarraldo (1982) Grizzly Man (2005)
(41) Nunsploitation The Devils (1971) School of the Holy Beast (1974) Killer Nun (1979) Nuns on the Run (1990) Nude Nuns with Big Guns (2010) The Little Hours (2017)
(42) Psycho-Thriller Peeping Tom (1960) The Innocents (1961) Repulsion (1965) Bad Timing (1980) Possession (1981) Misery (1990) Jacob's Ladder (1990) Memento (2000) Martyrs (2008) Shutter Island (2010) Black Swan (2010) Only God Forgives (2013) Gone Girl (2014) Room (2015) The Neon Demon (2016)
(43) Krzysztof Kieślowski Dekalog (1989) The Double Life of Veronique (1991) Three Colors Trilogy (1993)
(44) Akira Kurosawa Rashomon (1950) Ikiru (1952) Seven Samurai (1954) Throne of Blood (1957) The Hidden Fortress (1958) Yojimbo (1961) Sanjuro (1962) High and Low (1963) Red Beard (1965) Kagemusha (1980) Ran (1985) Dreams (1990)
(45) LGBT Girls in Uniform (1931) Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) Je, tu, il, elle (1974) Paris Is Burning (1990) My Own Private Idaho (1991) All about My Mother (1999) Beau travail (1999) Tropical Malady (2004) Brokeback Mountain (2005) Shortbus (2006) Weekend (2011) Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013) Carol (2015) Moonlight (2016) Call Me by Your Name (2017)
(46) Yasujirô Ozu Late Spring (1949) Early Summer (1951) Tokyo Story (1953) Good Morning (1959) Floating Weeds (1959) An Autumn Afternoon (1962)
(47) Wuxia Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) Hero (2002) House of Flying Daggers (2004) The Assassin (2015)
(48) Woody Allen Annie Hall (1977) Manhattan (1979) The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) Match Point (2005) Midnight in Paris (2011)
(49) Survival Walkabout (1971) The Edge (1997) Cast Away (2000) Shackleton (2002) Touching the Void (2003) Into the Wild (2007) 127 Hours (2010) All Is Lost (2013) The Revenant (2015)
(50) Robert Altman MAS*H (1970) McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) The Long Goodbye (1973) Nashville (1975) The Player (1992) Short Cuts (1993) Gosford Park (2001)
(51) Aliens Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) Alien (1979) E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) The Thing (1982) Aliens (1986) They Live (1988) The Abyss (1989) Independence Day (1996) District 9 (2009) Arrival (2016) Annihilation (2018)
(52) Rainer Werner Fassbinder The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971) The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1973) In a Year with 13 Moons (1978) Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) Veronika Voss (1982)
(53) Michelangelo Antonioni L'Avventura (1960) La Notte (1961) L'Eclisse (1962) Red Desert (1964) Blow-Up (1966)
(54) Martial Arts Fist of Fury (1972) Enter the Dragon (1973) The Street Fighter (1974) Drunken Master (1978) The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978) Wheels on Meals (1984) Police Story (1985) Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (1991) Ong Bak (2003) Ip Man (2008)
(55) Lars von Trier Breaking the Waves (1996) The Idiots (1998) Dancer in the Dark (2000) Dogville (2003) The Five Obstructions (2003) Antichrist (2009) Melancholia (2011)
(56) Horror Cat People (1942) Rosemary's Baby (1968) Night of the Living Dead (1968) The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) Halloween (1978) Dawn of the Dead (1978) Friday the 13th (1980) A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) Scream (1996) The Village (2004) The Descent (2005) Let the Right One In (2008) The Witch (2015) It Follows (2015) The Wailing (2016) It (2017)
(57) Supernatural horror The Exorcist (1973) Poltergeist (1982) The Devil's Advocate (1997) The Blair Witch Project (1999) The Sixth Sense (1999) The Others (2001) The Babadook (2014)
(58) Romantic drama Casablanca (1942) Brief Encounter (1945) Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) All That Heaven Allows (1955) Imitation of Life (1959) Doctor Zhivago (1965) Romeo and Juliet (1968) The Remains of the Day (1993) Sense and Sensibility (1995) Titanic (1997) The Notebook (2004) Atonement (2007) Blue Valentine (2010) Laurence Anyways (2012)
(59) Wes Anderson Rushmore (1998) The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) The Darjeeling Limited (2007) Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) Moonrise Kingdom (2012) The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
(60) Thriller M (1931) The Night of the Hunter (1955) The French Connection (1971) The Conversation (1974) Sorcerer (1977) The Vanishing (1988) Jurassic Park (1993) Speed (1994) Run Lola Run (1998) The Bourne Identity (2002) Infernal Affairs (2002) Collateral (2004) Miami Vice (2006) No Country for Old Men (2007) Prisoners (2013) Nightcrawler (2014) Green Room (2015)
(61) Michael Haneke The Seventh Continent (1989) Funny Games (1997) Code Unknown (2000) The Piano Teacher (2001) Caché (2005) The White Ribbon (2009) Amour (2012)
(62) Giallo The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) Deep Red (1975) Suspiria (1977) Tenebrae (1982) The New York Ripper (1982)
(63) Musical Top Hat (1935) The Wizard of Oz (1939) Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) Singin' in the Rain (1952) A Star Is Born (1954) West Side Story (1961) Mary Poppins (1964) The Sound of Music (1965) Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) Cabaret (1972) Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) Phantom of the Paradise (1974) The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) Saturday Night Fever (1977) Grease (1978) All That Jazz (1979) Little Shop of Horrors (1986) Moulin Rouge! (2001) Les Misérables (2012) La La Land (2016)
(64) Racism To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) In the Heat of the Night (1967) The Color Purple (1985) Do the Right Thing (1989) American History X (1998) This Is England (2006) 12 Years a Slave (2013) Selma (2014) Get Out (2017)
(65) Federico Fellini I Vitelloni (1953) La Strada (1954) The Nights of Cabiria (1957) La Dolce Vita (1960) 8½ (1963) Juliet of the Spirits (1965) Satyricon (1969) Amarcord (1973)
(66) Early cinema The Arrival of a Train (1896) The Kiss (1896) The Man with the Rubber Head (1901) A Trip to the Moon (1902) The Great Train Robbery (1903) Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) The Birth of a Nation (1915) Intolerance (1916)
(67) David Lynch Eraserhead (1977) The Elephant Man (1980) Blue Velvet (1986) Wild at Heart (1990) Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) Lost Highway (1997) Mulholland Drive (2001) Inland Empire (2006)
(68) Crime Le Samouraï (1967) The Godfather (1972) The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) Scarface (1983) Once Upon a Time in America (1984) The Untouchables (1987) The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) Heat (1995) City of God (2002) Catch Me If You Can (2002) Memories of Murder (2003) Lord of War (2005) The Town (2010) Victoria (2015) Sicario (2015) Baby Driver (2017) Good Time (2017)
(69) Heist The Sting (1973) Dog Day Afternoon (1975) The First Great Train Robbery (1978) Ocean's Eleven (2001) Heist (2001) The Italian Job (2003) Inside Man (2006) Inception (2010) The Town (2010)
(70) Paul Thomas Anderson Boogie Nights (1997) Magnolia (1999) There Will Be Blood (2007) The Master (2012) Phantom Thread (2017)
(71) Action comedy 48 Hrs. (1982) Lethal Weapon (1987) Maverick (1994) True Lies (1994) Bad Boys (1995) Men in Black (1997) Starship Troopers (1997) Three Kings (1999) Kung Fu Hustle (2004) Hot Fuzz (2007) 21 Jump Street (2012) Spy (2015) Deadpool (2016)
(72) Anime Angel's Egg (1985) Grave of the Fireflies (1988) Akira (1988) Ghost in the Shell (1995) Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion (1997) Perfect Blue (1997) Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1999) Millennium Actress (2001) Mind Game (2004) Paprika (2006) The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013) Your Name. (2016)
(73) David Cronenberg Videodrome (1983) The Fly (1986) Naked Lunch (1991) A History of Violence (2005) Eastern Promises (2007)
(74) Docufiction Nanook of the North (1922) On the Bowery (1956) In Vanda's Room (2000) Colossal Youth (2006) My Winnipeg (2007)
(75) Edward Yang Taipei Story (1985) A Brighter Summer Day (1991) Yi Yi (2000)
(76) Fantasy The Dark Crystal (1982) The NeverEnding Story (1984) Delicatessen (1991) Being John Malkovich (1999) The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Pan's Labyrinth (2006) The Fall (2006) Avatar (2009) Holy Motors (2012) A Ghost Story (2017) The Shape of Water (2017)
(77) Sharks Jaws (1975) Deep Blue Sea (1999) Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009) Shark Night (2011) Sharknado (2013) The Shallows (2016)
(78) Quentin Tarantino Reservoir Dogs (1992) Pulp Fiction (1994) Jackie Brown (1997) Kill Bill (2003) Inglourious Basterds (2009) Django Unchained (2012) The Hateful Eight (2015)
(79) Japan Ugetsu (1953) Sansho the Bailiff (1954) Harakiri (1962) Woman in the Dunes (1964) Kwaidan (1964) Onibaba (1964) The Face of Another (1966) Eros + Massacre (1969) Maborosi (1995) Cure (1997) All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001) Happiness of the Katakuris (2002) Nobody Knows (2004) Strange Circus (2005) The Calamari Wrestler (2005) Big Man Japan (2007) Love Exposure (2008) Confessions (2010) Like Father, Like Son (2013)
(80) Jacques Tati Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1953) Mon Oncle (1958) Playtime (1967)
(81) Alfred Hitchcock Rebecca (1940) Shadow of a Doubt (1943) Notorious (1946) Rope (1948) Strangers on a Train (1951) Dial M for Murder (1954) Rear Window (1954) Vertigo (1958) North by Northwest (1959) Psycho (1960) The Birds (1963)
(82) Animation Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) Pinocchio (1940) Fantasia (1940) Dumbo (1941) Bambi (1942) Fantastic Planet (1973) The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (1976) Only Yesterday (1991) Beauty and the Beast (1991) The Lion King (1994) The Prince of Egypt (1998) The Iron Giant (1999) The Triplets of Belleville (2003) The Incredibles (2004) Persepolis (2007) Waltz with Bashir (2008) How to Train Your Dragon (2010) It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012) The Red Turtle (2016)
(83) Iran Where is the Friend's Home? (1987) Close-Up (1990) A Moment of Innocence (1996) Taste of Cherry (1997) Certified Copy (2010) A Separation (2011) The Salesman (2015)
(84) Jean Renoir A Day in the Country (1936) La Grande Illusion (1937) The Rules of the Game (1939) French Cancan (1955)
(85) Monster The Blob (1953) Godzilla (1954) Tarantula (1955) Cloverfield (2008) Trollhunter (2010)
(86) Wim Wenders Alice in the Cities (1974) Kings of the Road (1976) The American Friend (1977) Paris, Texas (1984) Wings of Desire (1987)
(87) Teen American Graffiti (1973) Over the Edge (1979) The Warriors (1979) Rock 'n' Roll High School (1979) Rumble Fish (1983) Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986) Stand by Me (1986) Boyz n the Hood (1991) Kids (1995) Fucking Åmål (1998) Heathers (1988) Ken Park (2002) Mean Girls (2004) Superbad (2007) Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) Spring Breakers (2012) The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012) Boyhood (2014) Lady Bird (2017)
(88) Buster Keaton Our Hospitality (1923) Sherlock Jr. (1924) The General (1926) Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) The Cameraman (1928)
(89) Cannibal films Cannibal Holocaust (1980) Eaten Alive! (1980) Cannibal Ferox (1981) Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death (1989) Cannibal! The Musical (1993)
(90) Carl Theodor Dreyer The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) Vampyr (1932) Day of Wrath (1943) Ordet (1955) Gertrud (1964)
(91) Hippie The Love-Ins (1967) Psych-Out (1968) Zabriskie Point (1970) Hair (1979)
(92) Martin Scorsese Mean Streets (1973) Taxi Driver (1976) Raging Bull (1980) The King of Comedy (1982) After Hours (1985) Goodfellas (1990) The Age of Innocence (1993) Casino (1995) The Departed (2006) The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
(93) Mystery Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) Clue (1985) The Usual Suspects (1995) The Game (1997) Donnie Darko (2001) The Prestige (2006) The Man from Earth (2007)
(94) Pier Paolo Pasolini The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966) Teorema (1968) Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
(95) Prison The Great Escape (1963) Cool Hand Luke (1967) Escape from Alcatraz (1979) The Shawshank Redemption (1994) A Prophet (2009)
(96) Yakuza Tokyo Drifter (1966) Branded to Kill (1967) Ichi the Killer (2001) Zatōichi (2003) Outrage (2010)
(97) War drama The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Die Brücke (1959) Lawrence of Arabia (1962) The Battle of Algiers (1966) The Cranes Are Flying (1957) Come and See (1985) Schindler's List (1993) The Pianist (2002) Downfall (2004) The Hurt Locker (2008) Beasts of No Nation (2015)
(98) German expressionism The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) The Golem (1920) Nosferatu (1922) The Last Laugh (1924)
(99) Comedy Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958) Divorce, Italian Style (1962) The Pink Panther (1963) The Great Race (1965) The Odd Couple (1968) Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) Life of Brian (1979) The Jerk (1979) The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980) Tampopo (1985) A Fish Called Wanda (1988) My Cousin Vinny (1992) Office Space (1999) Jackass: The Movie (2002) Anchorman (2004) Borat (2006) The Hangover (2009)
(100) 90s action Total Recall (1990) Terminator 2 (1991) Point Break (1991) El Mariachi (1992) The Fugitive (1993) The Rock (1996) Mission: Impossible (1996) Con Air (1997) Face/Off (1997) The Matrix (1999)
(101) Andrei Tarkovsky Andrei Rublev (1966) Solaris (1971) The Mirror (1974) Stalker (1979) Nostalgia (1983) The Sacrifice (1986)
(102) Satire Sullivan's Travels (1941) The Producers (1967) If.... (1968) Blazing Saddles (1974) Network (1976) American Beauty (1999) Fight Club (1999) American Psycho (2000) Thank You for Smoking (2005) Idiocracy (2006) In the Loop (2009)
(103) Music A Hard Day's Night (1964) The Blues Brothers (1980) Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982) This Is Spinal Tap (1984) Stop Making Sense (1984) Amadeus (1984) Sister Act (1992) Buena Vista Social Club (1999) Almost Famous (2000) 8 Mile (2002) Ray (2004) Whiplash (2014)
(104) Alejandro Jodorowsky El Topo (1970) The Holy Mountain (1973) Santa Sangre (1989)
(105) Avant-garde documentary Man With a Movie Camera (1929) Blow Job (1964) News from Home (1977) Koyaanisqatsi (1982) Baraka (1992) La Commune (Paris, 1871) (2000) I was moving ahead … (2000) Habitat (2012)
(106) Ernst Lubitsch I Don't Want to Be a Man (1918) Trouble in Paradise (1932) Ninotchka (1939) The Shop Around the Corner (1940) To Be or Not to Be (1942)
(107) Erotic Last Tango in Paris (1972) In the Realm of the Senses (1976) Body Double (1984) Basic Instinct (1992) The Handmaiden (2016)
(108) Sci-fi The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Planet of the Apes (1968) THX 1138 (1971) Star Wars (1977) Blade Runner (1982) Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) On the Silver Globe (1988) Twelve Monkeys (1995) Star Trek: First Contact (1996) The Fifth Element (1997) Gattaca (1997) The Matrix (1999) A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) Minority Report (2002) Primer (2004) Moon (2009) Cloud Atlas (2012) Her (2013) Gravity (2013) Edge of Tomorrow (2014) Ex Machina (2014) Interstellar (2014) The Martian (2015)
(109) Tim Burton Edward Scissorhands (1990) The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) Ed Wood (1994) Mars Attacks! (1996) Big Fish (2003) Sweeney Todd (2007)
(110) Stoner films Up in Smoke (1978) Half Baked (1998) How High (2001) Pineapple Express (2008)
(111) Sports drama The Hustler (1961) Rocky (1976) Remember the Titans (2000) Million Dollar Baby (2004) The Wrestler (2008) The Fighter (2010) Moneyball (2011) Creed (2015)
(112) Powell & Pressburger The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) The Red Shoes (1948) Black Narcissus (1947)
(113) Dystopia Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) Brazil (1985) Dark City (1998) Battle Royale (2000) 28 Days Later... (2002) V for Vendetta (2005) Children of Men (2006) The Road (2009) Snowpiercer (2013) The Maze Runner (2014)
(114) Luis Buñuel The Young and the Damned (1950) Viridiana (1961) The Exterminating Angel (1962) Simon of the Desert (1965) Belle de Jour (1967) The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)
(115) Documentary Night and Fog (1956) Shoah (1985) The Thin Blue Line (1988) Hoop Dreams (1994) Man on Wire (2008) Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011) Leviathan (2012) The Act of Killing (2012) Tim's Vermeer (2013)
(116) Modern action 300 (2006) The Raid: Redemption (2011) Dredd (2012) Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) Hardcore Henry (2016)
(118) Rape revenge The Virgin Spring (1960) I Spit on Your Grave (1978) Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) Irreversible (2002) I Saw the Devil (2010)
(119) Wong Kar-wai Chungking Express (1994) Fallen Angels (1995) Happy Together (1997) In the Mood for Love (2000) 2046 (2004)
(120) Horror comedy Young Frankenstein (1974) House (1977) An American Werewolf in London (1981) Dead Alive (1992) Shaun of the Dead (2004) The Cabin in the Woods (2012) What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
(121) Courtroom drama 12 Angry Men (1957) Anatomy of a Murder (1959) Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) The Verdict (1982) A Few Good Men (1992) The Rainmaker (1997)
(122) Charlie Chaplin The Tramp (1915) The Kid (1921) The Circus (1928) City Lights (1931) The Great Dictator (1940) Limelight (1952)
(123) Yakuza Tokyo Drifter (1966) Branded to Kill (1967) Ichi the Killer (2001) Zatōichi (2003) Outrage (2010)
(124) Splatter Blood Feast (1963) The Wizard of Gore (1970) The Evil Dead (1981) Bad Taste (1987)
(125) Africa Black Girl (1966) Touki Bouki (1973) Hotel Rwanda (2004) Moolaadé (2004) Timbuktu (2014)
(126) Ancient Rome Quo Vadis (1951) Ben-Hur (1959) Spartacus (1960) Cleopatra (1963) Caligula (1979) Gladiator (2000)
(127) Biography The Life of Emile Zola (1937) Patton (1970) Gandhi (1982) Malcolm X (1992) Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) Schindler's List (1993) Monster (2003) The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) Lincoln (2012)
(128) John Cassavetes Shadows (1958) Faces (1968) A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
(129) Eastern Europe Ashes and Diamonds (1958) Daisies (1966) Cremator (1969) Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) Damnation (1988) Satantango (1994) Underground (1995) Black Cat, White Cat (1998) Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) No Man's Land (2001) The Turin Horse (2011) Ida (2013)
(130) Russia Brother (1997) Russian Ark (2002) The Return (2003) The Sun (2005) Hard to Be a God (2013) Leviathan (2014)
(131) Religion The Ten Commandments (1956) The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) The Mission (1986) The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) The Passion of the Christ (2004) Silence (2016)
(132) Cult films Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958) Barbarella (1968) Pink Flamingos (1972) Tron (1982) Ghostbusters (1984) Repo Man (1984) The Toxic Avenger (1984) Back to the Future (1985) Big Trouble in Little China (1986) Surf Nazis Must Die (1987) Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989) Army of Darkness (1992) Wayne’s World (1992) Clerks (1994) Bad Boy Bubby (1994) Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000) Donnie Darko (2001) Freddy Got Fingered (2001) The Brown Bunny (2003) The Room (2003) Fateful Findings (2013)
(133) Unsorted L'Atalante (1934) Children of Paradise (1945) It's a Wonderful Life (1946) Pather Panchali (1955) Marketa Lazarová (1967) The Conformist (1970) Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974) Cinema Paradiso (1988) Dead Man (1995) Life Is Beautiful (1997) Pi (1998) Being John Malkovich (1999) Adaptation. (2002) The Illusionist (2006) Synecdoche, New York (2008) Dogtooth (2009) Enter the Void (2009) Inception (2010) Rubber (2010) The Great Beauty (2013) Birdman (2014) A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014) Inherent Vice (2014) Chef (2014) The Lobster (2015) The Big Short (2015) Swiss Army Man (2016)
(134) Home Invasion Home Alone (1990) Panic Room (2002) Borgman (2013) The Gift (2015) Don't Breathe (2016)
(135) Historical The Leopard (1963) A Man for All Seasons (1966) Quest for Fire (1981) The Last of the Mohicans (1992) Braveheart (1995)
(136) New Hollywood Bonnie and Clyde (1967) The Graduate (1967) Five Easy Pieces (1970) The Last Picture Show (1971) Harold and Maude (1971) Easy Rider (1969)
(137) Hayao Miyazaki Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) Castle in the Sky (1986) My Neighbor Totoro (1988) Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) Porco Rosso (1992) Princess Mononoke (1997) Spirited Away (2001) Howl's Moving Castle (2004) The Wind Rises (2013)
(138) Italian neorealism Rome, Open City (1945) Paisan (1946) Bicycle Thieves (1948) Stromboli (1950)

Tiffany and Ronald (27 and xx years old)

• It’s been “a few days” since the bachelor party. Tiffany is feeling some kind of way about South Africa being a dangerous place, now that she bought an 8 year old boy with her. They sit down for dinner together at a restaurant, and Daniel says he wants to go home, and has other questions about the whole relationship. He knows they are keeping a secret from him.
  
• They are out to lunch and having a frank discussion a few days before the wedding. She wants to know his full criminal record. His first arrest was for LSD and heroin, but it wasn’t his… he was just wearing his friends jacket… Next up is armed robbery, but he says there was surveillance footage that proved his innocence. Next up was pawning his mom’s fridge. Next he stole from his employer. He says he was guilty of that one. Tiffany is getting cold feet hearing all this, and now strongly feels he won’t be able to come to America.
  

Jihoon and Deavan (29 and 22 years old)

• Jihoon and Deaven go out together by themselves to the Stratosphere casino (where Colt proposed to Larissa), where he also plans to propose. He slips the waitress a ring when Deavan goes to the bathroom, and asks here to slip it in her drink. It is kind of messy and they spill drinks in the process of retrieving the ring, but she says yes.
  
• Jihoon and his family are flying back to Korea tonight. She’s happy about being engaged, but sad he’s going home, and reality of her actually packing up and moving to Korea unsettles her a bit because she hasn’t actually planned a single thing yet.
  

Paul and Karine (35 and 23 years old)

• Paul finally came clean to Karine about the situation where his residency was denied. She will move back to her parents house if Paul has to leave. In the meantime she still needs to go to the doctor for a pregnancy checkup. They find out they are having a boy. Karine asks about visiting her parents and traveling by boat, and while it’s risky, she still wants to do it.
  
• They are going ahead to go back to Tonantis (spelling?) where her parents live. It is unclear how he will travel one way for 5ish days (each way) with deportation hanging over his head, but he is keeping the apartment in Manaus for now just in case. Karine just wants to rest in the room on the boat, but Paul’s being neurotic about bugs and poop water.
  

Jenny and Michael Jones (60 and 30 years old)

• It’s been “a few weeks” and things are starting to go wrong; the couple is happy but they haven’t figured out how they are going to overcome the obstacle that is Sumit’s parents.
  
• Sumit is clipping Jenny’s toenails for her. He’s promised to tell his parents about her, but at this point still hasn’t. His father keeps texting and calling though. He sneaks out to call his father without telling Jenny. His dad is demanding his address for starters, but Sumit won’t tell him. He does agree to go and meet them.
  

Corey and Evelin (32 and 26 years old)

• They are packing up from grandma’s house to move into Evelin’s apartment. The car is super busted and Corey’s seatbelt isn’t installed properly. Corey complains about the bugs at grandmas house and Evelin is super annoyed and upset. They get to the place and Corey still has some minor complaints, and Evelin looks like she wants to actually wants to kill him or herself. They sort of hug it out, but it seems pretty miserable from where I’m sitting.

Laura and Aladin (51 and 29 years old)

• not here :(

Cross-posting my list from books.
ART THIEVES, FORGERS, SMUGGLERS.
The Art of the Steal by Christopher Mason. A true story about the auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s and how they conspired to cheat their clients out of millions of dollars.
The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine by Benjamin Wallace. The most expensive bottle of wine and the conflicting reports about its history. This is a book that would enchant wine conessi… conues… lovers.
The Gardner Heist: The True Story of the World’s Largest Unsolved Art Theft by Ulrich Boser. Author Ulrich Boser looks at the unsolved art theft case of Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed by John Vaillant. Grant Hadwin, a logger-turned-activist, fells a unique 165 feet Sitka spruce in an act of protest. John Vaillant takes the readers into the heart of North America’s last great forest to find out why he did that.
Hitler’s Art Thief: Hildebrand Gurlitt, the Nazis, and the Looting of Europe’s Treasures by Susan Ronald. Hildebrand Gurlitt was an art thief, or as he put it himself, an ‘official dealer’ for Hitler and Goebbels. But he stole from the Jews and Nazis alike. This book was published after his hoard was recently (2013) discovered which created an international furor.
The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art by Matthew Hart. This book is about the art theft at Ireland’s Russborough House in 1986. The suspect, a gangster named Martin Cahill, played cat and mouse with police for years.
The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime by Miles Harvey. When you think about stealing some valuable art, do maps come to your mind? Then this book is for you. Gilbert Joseph Bland Jr. stole numerous centuries-old maps from research libraries in US and Canada.
I Was Vermeer: The Rise and Fall of the Twentieth Century’s Greatest Forger by Frank Wynne. Han van Meegeren became so much adapt at forging Vermeer paintings that it is said that even professional experts would find it difficult to point out his works from the originals. He earned more than $50 million by selling his forgeries – and he even swindled the Nazis.
The Lizard King: The True Crimes and Passions of the World’s Greatest Reptile Smugglers by Bryan Christy. Reptile smuggling is a big “business”. The author, a federal agent, suspected a reptile business owner of being a major smuggler and he started investigating. It was not as simple as it sounds because at one point he was chased by a mother alligator and even bitten by a python.
The Lost Chalice: The Epic Hunt for a Priceless Masterpiece by Vernon Silver. A 2500 year old cup made by the Greek master Euphronios which depicted the fall of Troy gets stolen and sold (along with 3 other such vessels). Then due to the questionable practice of some art dealers, no one can track down its last known owner.
The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr. With nothing better to do, the author embarks on a journey to discover a Caravaggio painting which was lost to time two hundred years ago.
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett. John Charles Gilkey stole rare books not because he wanted to make profit as most thieves do, but because he loved books. I guess if you want to call yourself a book-reader but don’t actually want to say… read a book, you could just steal them and show them off to your friends. But who are we to question the wisdom of “booklovers”, right?
The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession by Susan Orlean. If you thought that stealing maps is a weird “job” to have, how about stealing a rare breed of flower? We all know about the Tulipomania that gripped Netherlands in the 1630s. But this is a modern tale, and the book is perhaps one of the most popular ones on this list.
Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures by Robert K. Wittman, John Shiffman. This book is about Robert K. Wittman, FBI’s founder of the Art Crime Team and his undercover missions around the world to rescue various pieces of stolen art.
Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by Laney Salisbury. You could have a Jackson Pollock lying around in your basement, but if you can’t prove that the piece is real, you might as well use it as a table cloth (I might have exaggerated there a bit, but you get the point). John Myatt, a struggling artist, and John Drewe, a conman who knew the importance of Provenance in the art world, duped many people and museums by creating a fake paper trial that seemed to prove that the art was a real thing and not a forgery. So much so that the experts believe that there might still be some fake paintings created by Myatt displayed in prominent places as the real thing.
The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece by Edward Dolnick. Dolnick writes about the theft of Edvard Munch’s The Scream from the National Gallery in Oslo in 1994 and the subsequent investigation that took place to track it down.
Selling Hitler by Robert Harris In mid-eighties, Hitler’s diaries were “discovered” and many experts fell for the con. The backpeddling many did when it was revealed that the diaries were not real is really amusing to read about.
Shell Games: Rogues, Smugglers, and the Hunt for Nature’s Bounty by Craig Welch. This book is about the poaching of a larger-than-life clam – a Geoduck, to be precise, and the subsequent chase from the wildlife police to nab the poacher.
Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers and the Looting of the Ancient World by Roger Atwood. This book provides a sweeping history of thefts of various priceless antiques.
Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World’s Most Coveted Masterpiece by Noah Charney. The twelve panel oil-painting of the Mystic Lamb is the most frequently stolen artwork in the world. It was stolen 13 times. One wonders whether they could have guarded it a little better after the first couple of times, you know. Anyway, this book describes the events of each theft.
Stolen World: A Tale of Reptiles, Smugglers, and Skulduggery by Jennie Erin Smith. Two reptile smugglers compete against each other to conquer the illegal trade for themselves. The funny thing is, the Zoos stood against them in the courts, but they had no problem buying rare fauna from the two smugglers, sometimes simultaneously.
Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession, and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California by Frances Dinkelspiel. A massive fire destroyed wines worth $250 million in a California warehouse, making it the largest destruction of wine in history. It was done by a conman named Mark Anderson, who rented storage space at the same warehouse. This book tells why he did that and also goes into the surprisingly bloody history of wine trade in California. (reads well with cranberry juice).
Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa by R. A. Scotti. On August 21, 1911, a man walked out of the Louvre with the Mona Lisa tucked inside his coat (should have painted it bigger, eh Vinci?). I am not going to spoil this book for anyone. Read it if you want to know whether Mona Lisa was recovered or was lost to time forever.
CARTELS, GANGS, UNDERWORLD.
American Desperado: My Life --- From Mafia Soldier to Cocaine Cowboy to Secret Government Asset by Jon Roberts, Evan Wright. Jon Roberts, who starred in documentary Cocaine Cowboys tells his story to the journalist Evan Wright in this book. Roberts smuggled drugs to Miami for the Medellin Cartel (which will feature many times in this category).
At the Devil’s Table: The Untold Story of the Insider Who Brought Down the Cali Cartel by William C. Rempel. This is Narcos Season 3, basically. Remember the family guy who gets involved with the Cali Cartel and mops around for the whole season even though he had an unbelievably hot wife who was clearly out of his league? That character was based on Rempel. And if I must say so, the book is more compelling than that season of Narcos. Nothing can beat Agent Pena, though.
Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob by Dick Lehr, Gerard O’Neill. The story of James ‘Whitey’ Bulger – the head of the Irish Mob in Boston - who became an informant for the FBI and chaos ensued. Depp plays Whitey Bulger in the movie adaptation with a soggy tortilla glued to his face as make-up.
Blow: How a Small -Town Bay Made $100 Million with the Medellin Cocaine Cartel and Lost it All by Bruce Porter. Another book where Johnny Depp plays the main character in the movie adaptation. This book is about George Jung, who after meeting Carlos Lehder, started selling cocaine in the United States through Medellin Cartel.
Cocaine Diaries: A Venezuelan Prison Nightmare by Paul Keany, Jeff Farrell. Paul Keany was caught smuggling half-a-million euro worth of cocaine into Venezuela. He was sentenced to 8 years in prison. Now, prisons everywhere aren’t exactly fun places to be, but Los Teques where Keany was incarcerated was nothing short of hell on earth.
Confessions of a Yakuza by Junichi Saga. Junichi Saga was a doctor by profession. A patient, who was a former Yakuza, recounted his life story before him. Saga recorded the conversations, and broke doctor-patient confidentiality by writing this book.
Doctor Dealer: The Rise and Fall of an All-American Boy and His Multimillion-Dollar Cocaine Empire by Mark Bowden. A dentist named Larry Lavin builds the foundation for a cocaine empire in the United States.
Donnie Brasco by Joseph D. Pistone, Richard Woodley. Joseph D. Pistone, an FBI agent, goes undercover for six years to infiltrate the Mafia. Do watch the movie too, it is Depp’s last movie without weird make-up.
El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency by Ioan Grillo. Journalist Ioan Grillo has written, arguably, the definitive book on Mexican drug cartels. Why he is still alive is anybody’s guess.
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rouge Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh. Venkatesh, who was a sociology grad student at the time, infiltrated one of Chicago’s most notorious gangs. This is one of a kind type of book.
Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano. This book is about the Italian Crime Network called Camorra in Naples, Italy. Due to his intensive investigative journalism which exposed lot of insider information about the crime syndicate, author Saviano still has to live under constant police protection.
The Good Mothers: The True Story of the Women Who Took on the World’s Most Powerful Mafia by Alex Perry. This is a recent book, where the author Alex Perry looks inside the ruthless Calabrian Mafia of Italy and three women who want to save their own and their children’s lives. This is a fascinating and courageous look into an aspect of the Mafia which is often overlooked by most.
Hunting El Chapo: The Inside Story of the American Lawman Who Captured the World’s Most Wanted Drug-Lord by Andrew Hogan, Douglas Century. Remember when Joaquin Guzman was caught for the first time and then he escaped and then he was caught again for good? Yes? Then read this one. But this book only focuses on the operation that nabbed him for the first time. I must warn you though – the author, Andrew Hogan – is really really in love with himself and it seeps into his writing.
The Infiltrator: My Secret Life Inside the Dirty Banks Behind Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel by Robert Mazur. Mazur went undercover and actually became a money launderer for Pablo Escobar. This book is more about how bankers actively helped to launder the drug money and how Mazur helped to bring them down.
Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw by Mark Bowden. This is the best book about tracking and eventually killing Pablo Escobar. And as Walter Jr. pointed out to Walter White, it focuses on the good guys, not the bad ones. Good companion book to Pablo Escobar: My Father written by Escobar’s son.
Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America’s Strangest Jail by Rusty Young. The author stays inside San Pedro jail for months with a drug smuggler to chronicle his tale. This is one of the most popular books written on cocaine smuggling.
McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by Misha Glenny. This is a thorough investigation into organized crime worldwide which accounts for 1/5th of total GDP of the world. This book would please readers who are into extensively researched true-crime history books, not so much a casual reader (inb4 - I just read 5 pages of McMafia and wow… just wow).
Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade by Edward Bunker. Edward Bunker had had an eventful life. Incarceration for two and a half decades, being on FBI’s most wanted list, and being a crime novelist. This is his autobiography.
Mr. Nice by Howard Marks. Howard Marks started dealing dope in small quantities while he was studying at Oxford – as you do – and then eventually graduated to dealing it in tons (what the hell was he studying there? Oh, philosophy). This is his fascinating story.
Narcoland: The Mexican Drug Lords and Their Godfathers by Anabel Hernandez. Yet another book that resulted in the author getting death threats. This proves the old cliché true that the pen is mightier than the sword; until the sword comes down and cuts your neck. That’s why the author has to live under constant protection.
Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel by Tom Wainwright. Any aspiring drug lords should read this instruction manual. Just kidding. Wainwright goes deep into the functioning of various drug cartels and at the end also comes up with a plan to defeat them.
News of a Kidnapping by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Little known author tries his hand at true-crime. Pablo Escobar kidnapped 10 journalists when he was on the run from the authorities. This book revolves around that event.
The Night it Rained Guns: Unravelling the Purulia Arms Drop Conspiracy by Chandan Nandy. On a December night in 1995, someone airdropped three weapons-laden wooden pallets over Purulia, West Bengal. Who did it and why? This book tells the story about one of India’s greatest ever security breaches.
No Angel: My Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels by Jay Dobyns, Nils Johnson-Shelton. Dobyns was the first federal agent to infiltrate the inner circle of the notorious biker gang. This is his story.
Pablo Escobar: My Father by Juan Pablo Escobar. Juan Pablo is an architect and lives and practices his trade in Argentina. Even though Pablo was his father, Juan does not try to justify his actions even a little bit. This is one of the best books written on Pablo Escobar.
The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe. Sister Ping, leader of the Chinese underworld in the US, earned $40 million a year smuggling people from China. Told from the viewpoints of gangsters, investigators, and poor immigrants alike, this book provides a unique window into the world of human smuggling.
Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City, Was Extorted out of Millions by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in FBI History by Michael D. Blutrich. I am disappointed that they went with FBI instead of Federal Bureau of Investigation in the title. Should have made it longer. Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City on the 34th Street Just Opposite the Starbucks, Was Extorted out of 4.54 Millions and 55 Cents Plus Taxes by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in Federal Bureau of Investigation History by Michael Dostoyevsky Blutrich
Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein. The author, working as a reporter in Japan, writes about the seedy underbelly of crime in the country.
The Untouchables by Eliot Ness, Oscar Fraley. Where’s Nitty? He’s in the car.” Great movie. How Eliot Ness and his team started the downward spiral in criminal career of Al Capone. A somewhat embellished account was also written in the book, but nonetheless, it is a gripping tale.
Veerappan: Chasing the Brigand by K. Vijay Kumar. Koose Muniswamy Veerappan was the last big outlaw of India. A sandalwood smuggler who lived in the forest to evade the police, Veerappan killed hundreds of policemen and civilians. K. Vijay Kumar, the officer who led the task force that ultimately brought down the brigand, is the author of this book.
Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family by Nicholas Pileggi. ” I’m funny how, I mean funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you? Goodfellas is perhaps the best Mafia movie ever made, so read it in his own words why Pileggi might fold under questioning.
Zero Zero Zero by Roberto Saviano, Virginia Jewiss. This Saviano guy must have a death wish. But as a handsome list-writer once eloquently said, “If bitten already by a King Cobra, what difference it makes if you French kiss a Black Mamba?” Since the publication of his book on the Italian crime syndicate, Saviano has to live under constant police protection. So to make sure they don’t slack off, he wrote a book on Cocaine Cartel, this time acquiring lots of admirers in Latin America.
CONMEN, IMPOSTORS.
The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter by Jason Kersten. The Art of making money is to make other people work for you; not the other way round. But more scrupulous method of making money would be to counterfeit it. Art Williams did exactly that.
Catch Me If You Can: The True Story of a Real Fake by Frank W. Abagnale. Maybe the most popular book on this list, Abagnale Jr.’s book is not to be missed even if you have watched the movie starring the actor who had sex with a bear (no, not Tormund).
Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock. One “Dr.” John R. Brinkley, set-up a medical practice to surgically insert goat glands in human testicles to restore their fading sex drive. I am not joking, this happened.
Conman: A Master Swindler’s Own Story by J. R. Weil, W. T. Brannon. Known as “Yellow Kid” Weil was a master conman, who duped public of more than $8 million 100 years ago. He’s called by many as the greatest conman of all time (second to the companies that charge service fees on the internet, of course).
Eyeing the Flash: The Making of a Carnival Con Artist by Peter Fenton. Fenton was a math student until he turned into a carnival con artist. How many bananas he stole from the monkeys? How many bales of potatoes from the elephants? Read this book to find out.
Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England by Sarah Wise. If you have any annoying friends who romanticize the Victorian era and say that they would have liked to live there, tell them to read this book and get back to you after that.
The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Impostor by Mark Seal. This is the true story of one of the greatest impostors of all time. The man could have impersonated a chihuahua if he wanted to.
The Man Who Sold the Eiffel Tower by James Francis Johnson. Viktor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower not once, but twice. I still have the relevant papers that my great grandfather left us. I’m going to shift it to Nauru or Detroit.
The Mark Inside: A Perfect Swindle, a Cunning Revenge, and a Small History of the Big Con by Amy Reading. This is a revenge story of a man who sets out to con the conmen who conned him twice. Unfortunately, the book could have been written better, but it is still worth having a look at.
Playing Dead: A Journey Through the World of Death Fraud by Elizabeth Greenwood. I once tried playing dead in a meeting when asked about the progress on my project. But there are people who fake their death for lesser gains, such as insurance fraud and debt fraud. Author Elizabeth Greenwood journeys into the dark world of death fraud to find out more.
Ponzi’s Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend by Mitchell Zuckoff. Charles Ponzi was so successful in duping people that we have immortalized his name by terming such swindles after him. At one point, he was raking in $2 millions a week. How many weeks would it take you to earn 2 million dollars at your current income? (sorry, that got heavy fast. It hurt me too).
A Rum Affair: A True Story of Botanical Fraud by Karl Sabbagh. One botanist claimed that some species of plants on the islands south of Scotland survived the last Ice Age. Another botanist doubted him. This might not sound like a big fraud if you are not into plants, but believe me when I say that the 2 botanists who just read this threw their phones away in disgust and disbelief.
Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest by Gregg Olsen. A quack doctor named Linda Hazard developed a technique called “fasting treatment”. The story focuses on two sisters who fell for the quack’s assurances that they would be cured of all the diseases - real or imagined. This book is quite infuriating to read. Hazard was a despicable human being.
Swindled: From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee – The Dark History of the Food Cheats by Bee Wilson. Wilson looks from ancient Rome to current times for food frauds. And she finds them aplenty (companion read - while having a nice snack).
A Treasury of Deception: Liars, Misleaders, Hoodwinkers, and the Extraordinary True Stories of History’s Greatest Hoaxes, Fakes and Frauds by Michael Farquhar. This is a good bathroom book about fakers through history.
The Woman Who Wasn’t There: The True Story of an Incredible Deception by Robin Gaby Fisher, Angelo J. Guglielmo Jr. Have you heard about Tania Head? If you haven’t, I urge you to skip this book. Tania Head duped survivors of 9/11 and the whole world alike into believing that she was one of the survivors from the South Tower of World Trade Center. I feel enraged just by typing this. So just read this book if you want to know more about her. There are a couple of documentaries out there too.
HACKERS.
The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Clifford Stoll. Long before internet became a place for cat memes, Cliff Stoll was working at a research lab as a systems manager. One day he found 75 cents of accounting error. This made him alert that an unauthorized person was logging into the system. Thus began his lone effort of tracking down the spy.
Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell by Phil Lapsley. Before there was internet, or even personal computers, mobsters and teenagers hacked the telephone system.
Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker by Kevin D. Mitnick, William L. Simon. The book tells the story of one of the best hackers of all times, Kevin Mitnick, and his cat and mouse game with the FBI.
The Spider Network: The Wild Story of a Math Genius, a Gang of Backstabbing Bankers, and One of the Greatest Scams in Financial History by David Enrich. A group of bankers manipulated daily interest rates just a fraction here and there on loans worth trillions of dollars and made some serious cash for themselves. This book also rocks one of the ugliest book covers of 2017.
MUTINEERS, PIRATES, OUTLAWS.
Batavia’s Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History’s Bloodiest Mutiny by Mike Dash. I was torn whether to include this book in the list as the history of Batavia’s mutiny is littered with corpses. But as the focus is on the mutiny, I am going to keep it here. This event could give the Medusa’s raft a run for its money.
The Floating Brothel: The Extraordinary True Story of an Eighteenth-Century Ship and its Cargo of Female Convicts by Sian Rees. Poor girls in England, most of who were petty thieves, were given a chance to sail to Botany Bay in Australia to create a new life for themselves and the male population of New South Wales. But the real story happened at the sea on board the ship Lady Julian.
The Last Outlaws: The Lives and Legends of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid by Thom Hatch. Butch: What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful. Guard: People kept robbing it. Butch: Small price to pay for beauty. The book might not be full of memorable dialogues as the movie, but if you want to know more about the legendary outlaws, give this book a chance.
Lost Paradise: From Mutiny on the Bounty to a Modern-Day Legacy of Sexual Mayhem, the Dark Secrets of Pitcairn Island Revealed by Kathy Marks. Mutiny of the Bounty is perhaps the most infamous of mutinies that occurred at sea. Even after the event and hundreds of years later, the descendants of Fletcher Christian and his sailors continue to live a crime-filled life like their forefathers on Pitcairn Island.
The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd by Richard Zacks. This book will change your perception of Captain Kidd, that’s for sure.
To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West by Mark Lee Gardner. This non-fiction book concentrates on Sheriff Pat Garrett’s chase in pursuit of the bandit Billy the Kid. If you like reading westerns, this one and The Last Outlaws are not to be missed.
Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates by David Cordingly. Cordingly takes a look at life among the pirates. Some of your romanticism would be squashed, but there were some good things about being a pirate too. Life among the pirates was neither black nor white; it was beige.
POLITICAL CRIMES
Arms and the Dudes: How Three Stoners from Miami Beach Became the Most Unlikely Gunrunners in History by Guy Lawson. Three kids won a 300 million dollar contract – legitimately – I must add, to supply ammunition to the Afghanistan military. They had no money, but still they almost pulled it off. I don’t know, read this book, and if you’re a US citizen, visit the websites mentioned in the book, see if they are still doing business the same way, and if you want, you can become a supplier to the army too. Don’t forget to send me my cut (the movie War Dogs was trash).
The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair by Sam Roberts. Even if you’re not a United Statian of American (USians?), chances are you might have read at least something about the execution of the Rosenberg couple as spies. This is probably the best book about the subject.
Curveball: Spies, Lies, and the Man Behind Them: How America Went to War in Iraq by Bob Drogin. How many weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq? If your answer is “what’s that?” then congratulations, you’re not unlike one of your former presidents. Who told the USians that there were WMDs with Saddam? Curveball.
The Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. Perkins was an economic hitman, who at the instruction of US intelligence agencies and giant corporations cajoled and blackmailed other country leaders to serve US foreign policy and award lucrative contracts to American businesses (now that job has been transferred to the White House).
A Kim Jong – Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator’s Rise to Power by Paul Fischer. Say you want to make a big movie for your country. But there is no one in your country who can handle such an ambitious project. What do you do? Hire some talent from other country? But you’re Kim Jong – Il. Oh. Then you just kidnap them, and force them to make the glorious movie of yours. Read this book. It’s pretty absurd (the movie they eventually made for Kim was utter shit. The Room would look like Gone with the Wind compared to that abomination).
The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World’s Most Dangerous Secrets… And How We Could Have Stopped Him by Douglas Frantz, Catherine Collins. One day a man Abdul Qadeer Khan caught a plane to Pakistan from Europe. With him he had blueprints of the mechanism that could prepare weapons grade Uranium that he had stolen from the lab he worked at in the last 3 years. He would make the first atomic bomb for Pakistan with that information. Then he sold the tech to stable countries like Iran, North Korea and Libya. How can someone get away with stealing such powerful information? Read this book to find out.
Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program that Brought Nazi Scientists to America by Annie Jacobsen. This is a pretty controversial topic that has only gained wider acknowledgement in recent decades. Read this book to know in detail how bogus the claims of justice being served to the perpetrators of the Holocaust were. Basically, if you were a scientist, you were very likely to be acquitted from any War Crimes allegations.
The Real Odessa: How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina by Uki Goni. How did most of the Nazis who managed to escape from Germany ended up in South America? Read about the collusion of various entities and institutions that made it possible in this book.
The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell: A Dyslexic Traitor, an Unbreakable Code, and the FBI’s Hunt for America’s Stolen Secrets by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee. This is the true story of a mole in FBI, how he attempted to sell classified information and how FBI tried to track him down.
ROBBERIES, HEISTS.
Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts by Julian Rubinstein. If there is one thief in this list that I admire, it is without a doubt, Attila Ambrus. Ambrus was known as a gentleman thief, who would ask – no, request - the teller to fill his bag with money. If you read this book, it would be hard for you to dislike Attila even though he was a thief.
Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief by Bill Mason, Lee Gruenfeld. Bill Mason looted many famous personalities in his long career as a jewel thief. In this book he tells how he did it.
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk W. Johnson. Do you know there are people whose hobby is fly tying? The feathery thing that you attach to the hook to catch fish? But these are not your average fly tiers. They use feathers from exotic birds to create different ties whose total cost could run in thousands of dollars. Moreover, many of the most coveted birds are either protected or extinct. So one night a man named Edwin Rist broke into Tring museum and took hundreds of bird skins, some that belonged to Darwin, to fuel his hobby and even getting rich by selling precious feathers to other tiers. Don’t miss this book.
Finders Keepers: The Story of a Man Who Found $1 Million by Mark Bowden. Who hasn’t dreamt of finding a big bag of money? It couldn’t have happened to a more clueless person. Joey Coyle, to be exact.
Flawless: Inside the Largest Diamond Heist in History by Scott Andrew Selby. The theft from Antwerp that still raises many questions.
Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde by Jeff Guinn. The truth is not that romantic.
The Great Pearl Heist: London’s Greatest Thief and Scotland Yard’s Hunt for the World’s Most Valuable Necklace by Molly Caldwell Crosby. Pearls, more valuable than the Hope Diamond, are stolen by thieves in Edwardian London.
The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton. My favorite Crichton book. Stealing gold from a running train! Watch the movie too that stars the great Sean Connery.
Heist: The Oddball Crew Behind the $17 Million Loomis Fargo Theft by Jeff Diamant. How easy is it to steal 17 million dollars? As far as these thieves were concerned, not much. Getting away with it was another thing altogether. The movie was pretty average, I think.
Into the Blast: The True Story of DB Cooper by Skipp Porteous, Robert Blevins. Is Tommy Wiseau DB Cooper? If only that was true. Read the book but don’t expect any clear-cut answers (I think most people would agree that the clumsy bastard died after he jumped from the plane).
A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York by Timothy J. Gilfoyle. True story of George Appo, a pickpocket living in nineteenth-century New York.
Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History by Ben Mezrich. A guy steals moon rocks from NASA and then had sex on them with his girlfriend (how the hell is that comfortable?)
The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel. The last hermit was not a hermit in true sense. He didn’t rely on land to feed himself. He stole from the nearby community. Before someone says I have spoiled the book for them, it is revealed in the first chapter that he is a thief.
WHITE COLLAR CRIMES.
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou. The Steve Jobs impersonator, Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of Theranos, and her old boyfriend, Sunny, are some of the most vile people that I have come across while reading about corporate crime. This is one of the best books that I have read this year.
Den of Thieves by James B. Stewart. This is probably the most famous book written about those Wall Street scoundrels.
Empire of Deception: The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation by Dean Jobb. The story of Leo Koretz, who created one of the longest running Ponzi scheme in the 1920s Chicago.
The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald. Mark Whitacre becomes an FBI informant against his own corporation. But as time goes by, the FBI starts to realize that Mark is not as truthful as he seems to be, and he has his own agenda (they made a movie with Matt Damon).
Octopus: Sam Israel, the Secret Market, and Wall Street’s Wildest Con by Guy Lawson. Sam Israel’s hedge fund was making heavy losses. So naturally, he fabricated fake returns to fool the investors. Then he heard about a secret market from where he could convert his millions into billions. That’s how he lost the last 150 million dollars of his invertors’ money.
Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice by Bill Browder. Only thing you are going to learn from this book is don’t do business in Russia.
The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind. Bethany McLean asked one simple question in her article when everyone else was going gaga over Enron. “What does Enron actually do?” Nobody knew. Even Enron couldn’t give a specific answer. They were not just committing accounting fraud; they were looting ordinary people by creating fake shortage of electricity and driving the prices high. The documentary is worth watching too.
Stung: The Incredible Obsession of Brian Molony by Gary Stephen Ross. The guy Molony debited huge amounts of money from the bank he worked at to feed his gambling addiction. Oh, and he took the money in other people’s name who held huge accounts there. This is one of the best true-crime books that I have ever read.
Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way by Jon Krakauer. You know the man who builds schools in remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan? Great guy, right? Krakauer doesn’t think so. And he’ll tell you why in this short book.
The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust by Diana B. Henriques. 65 billion dollars. That’s the amount that Madoff swindled from people through decades of fraud. I think I can buy a small island country with this much money. The idiot is in jail though. I don’t know, maybe after a couple of billion, skip to a country with no extradition treaty and live the rest of your life without the fear of being getting caught? But then, these types of people don’t know when to stop.
OTHER.
American Roulette: How I Turned the Odds Upside Down --- My Wild Twenty-Five-Year Ride Ripping Off World’s Casinos by Richard Marcus. The guy ripped-off casinos all over the world by stealing gaming chips while maintaining an illusion of a highroller to lend his eventual take required legitimacy.
Breaking the Rock: The Great Escape from Alcatraz by Jolene Babyak. Written by the daughter of a guard at Alcatraz, this book tells the story of the infamous escape from the prison island. Don’t forget to watch the classic movie too.
Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich. The movie 21 was based on this book. But if you want to know the real story, without the whitewashing, you have no choice but to read this book.
Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy by Kevin Bales. Kevin Bales estimates that there are 27 million people worldwide who live as slaves, right now. And yes, slavery still exists in United States of America in case you were wondering. This is a depressing book.
Fish: A Memoir of a Boy in a Man’s Prison by T. J. Parsell. Rape in prison is absolutely overlooked almost everywhere. Read this book if you can endure reading about helplessness page after page.
Hotel K: The Shocking Inside Story of Bali’s Most Notorious Jail by Kathryn Bonella. Prison systems in developing world differ from the developed one in one regard that the guards and officials there are more corrupt and hence are likely to look the other way when something bad is going down amongst the inmates. Kerobokan Jail in Bali is one of the worst among those.
The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison by Pete Earley. The author interviewed inmates from Leavenworth Prison for two years. The book is the result of that labor.
The Laundrymen: Inside the World’s Third Largest Business by Jeffrey Robinson. I have a perfect idea to launder money. Laser Tag! Robinson looks at the third largest business in the world. The book was published a while ago, but still hasn’t lost most of its relevancy.
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer. Jon releases the Krakauer on one of the most relevant subjects of today. Rapes in colleges. These institutes would do anything to sweep things under the rug to maintain the illusion of clean image in the public eye.
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover. The author worked as a prison guard for a year at one of the most notorious prisons of the United States. This book is about his experience.

First things first, The culture and music of Black Panther was fantastic. I was wowed with their great way of blending African culture to the modern technology with the signature building and the "mask" plane with were genius design and all. The place was well designed and the deep culture was very believable. Moreover, the moment when Killmonger set foot in Wakanda, the music also changed, signifying the intrusion of him by starting mixing hip hop to tribal rhythm. All the technology was awesome and the black cast was top notch. Every tribes seems to have their own signature technology too. Micheal B Jordan was awesome as a villain and the scene with Killmonger and his dad was gold. However, ....
In before the next part, I am sorry guys, I really wanted to like Black Panther, after so many good reviews and hype from you guys, but I just could not. I probably get tons of downvotes and salt for this too.
The plot is just weird, it seems alright but part of me feels like I'm watching a cut version without some further scene to explain the plot for me.
Some stuffs:

• Ok, King T'Chaka:
  The former BP was forced to kill his younger brother because of his radicalization. N'jobu, his brother, was informing Ulysses Klaue, a criminal, about Wakanda and told him where can he attacked to get the Vibranium.
  

After killing his brother, he then proceed to leave, without any checking the room for notes, documents or information about Wakanda or his brother's colleagues. Furthermore, he also left the body behind for the cops to find and expose his kingdom to the world. ?

• The museum heist:

Wow, a stealth heist, with great beginning, surprise, poisoning, hostages.... BANG. Everyone dies!!!
What? So why don't you storm in there, steal the Vibranium, then leave on an ambulance, seems still okay to me. Why planned a heist like that ended up in a robbery.

• The Korean casino.

So the US wanted the most valuable metal in the world, Vibranium, and they had to buy it from a shady criminal, what should they do? Oh, send 1 single man to buy it, without guards, without planning, without extract points, in a fishy casino is SK.

• After the casino:

It seems that Klaue miraculously survived a horrible accident with barely any injury. Cool, now let's capture him and hold him in the least secured room in the police station with nothing behind the wall and hope that he does not brings any friend with him that may rescue him. So it seems all Wakandans were just extra careless when it comes to putting Klaue behind bars.

• Killmonger, aka Erik, aka N'Jadaka, who was N'jobu's son was a highly trained professional soldier, an undercover agent, a war veteran who was perfect in every way.

Is this not another Mary Sue/Marty Stu thing?
An important character with a tragic past now excel in every aspect in his life, overcome great odd and carry a mission for redemption of his past and takes vengeance to those who wronged him?
I have not lived in US yet, but it seems to me, a son of a criminal, now dead, with mom seems to be not in the picture much, can advance so much while hundred thousand of others kids with same fate ended up worse.
I am not saying he has no opportunity to do these things, it was just so convenient and easy to set him up like that to make him a badass villan and not very realistic too.

• Erik, killing Klaue:

So Erik killed Klaue to earn some credit from the Wakandan, right? So why he had to struck a deal with Klaue before, seems to be no reason at all. He could just meet Klaue, kill him, come back to Wakanda, and earn some trust.

• The weird loyalty of Wakandan:

" We will serve whoever sit in that throne, no matter how evil, foolish, dickhead they are". That is what I see in the political situation in Wakanda. Seriously, it is a miracle that this country has not ended up killing each other in civil war or destroyed themselves with Vibranium.

• The Heart Shape plant:

So this plant gives people super power physically exceeding normal human. Cool. And let's not grow it any where else except this tiny room. In addition, when Killmonger was there, he just seems to be alright with burning the whole things down without thinking about consuming more to be stronger or giving his people this plant so they can rise up themselves.

• The society:

Who get chosen to be outside herding sheep and who will have the right to stay in the technological advanced city. It is just unfair for people outside.

• W'kabi

Saying he is super loyal to the king 5 mins before he betrayed everything he knows including his long time friend and his lover with a strange dude who was born outside and also conveniently killed his nemesis. Hmmmm

• Shuri

The whole kingdom’s technology innovation lays in the hands of a 16 years old girl without any other older person/scientist in sight. Hmmm

• T'Challa to Killmonger after the big fight:

"I know you tried to kill me, my mom, my sisters (for fun), my friends, turned the country up side down, probably also plotted to overthrow world's governments, ignite social turmoil, and take over other's nations. But I will let you live."
To me, this moment, every character development, conflicts, ideology clash were rendered meaningless. The king did not learn.

• T'Challa to the world.
  Yes, Wakanda will open to the world, but please also notice that this nation's government is a totalitarian monarchy which leaders elected by a Mak'Gora or a fighting ritual where one can be beaten to dead. We are not barbarian at all.
  

And also some other things:

• Most of the fight was in night time, and the characters were mostly black or in black suit. It just hard to concentrate on the fight. Shaky cams were horrible too.
  
• A private plane flies from South Korea to Central Africa? Nice
  
• Shuri was also kinda Mary Sue imo
  
• The "Sneakers" was never mentioned again in the movie. Shame.
  
• Killmonger's motive was good at first, then turned into weird racial politics with no convincing reason at all.
  
• The Rhino seems to be able to identify friends from foes who actually were allies, too.
  
• Predictable, but in MCU it is okay.
  
• Too much CGI
  

I loved Thor: Ragnarok, it was a fun movie with exciting moments and fair storyline, but Black Panther did not achieve the same level as Ragnarok. Maybe I went to the cinema with my high hopes and expectation which was failed to be met. I thought a lot about writing this down because it seems contradict with almost everyone's opinion. On IMDB, the movie was first rated 7.1, the a massive influx of 10 pulled the rating to 7.9 where it is sitting right now. For me, this movie deserved a 6/10 at best.
Thanks for reading guys. If I said anything wrong, I am all ear open to your idea and explanation.
Edit: And also who downvote this, please explain these above things. You and I may like or not like the movie but those plot holes and illogical detail need to be asserted.