Books about Swindled from Amazon.com

Bad food has a history Swindled tells it. Through a fascinating mixture of cultural and scientific history, food politics, and culinary detective work, Bee Wilson uncovers the many ways swindlers have cheapened, falsified, and even poisoned our food throughout history. In the hands of people and corporations who have prized profits above the health of consumers, food and drink have been tampered with in often horrifying ways--padded, diluted, contaminated, substituted, mislabeled, misnamed, or otherwise faked. Swindled gives a panoramic view of this history, from the leaded wine of the ancient Romans to today's food frauds--such as fake organics and the scandal of Chinese babies being fed bogus milk powder.

Wilson pays special attention to nineteenth- and twentieth-century America and England and their roles in developing both industrial-scale food adulteration and the scientific ability to combat it. As Swindled reveals, modern science has both helped and hindered food fraudsters--increasing the sophistication of scams but also the means to detect them. The big breakthrough came in Victorian England when a scientist first put food under the microscope and found that much of what was sold as "genuine coffee" was anything but--and that you couldn't buy pure mustard in all of London.

Arguing that industrialization, laissez-faire politics, and globalization have all hurt the quality of food, but also that food swindlers have always been helped by consumer ignorance, Swindled ultimately calls for both governments and individuals to be more vigilant. In fact, Wilson suggests, one of our best protections is simply to reeducate ourselves about the joys of food and cooking.

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Price: $14.99 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In 1945, a small-time Dutch art dealer was arrested for selling a forgery of a priceless national treasure - a painting by Vermeer - to Hitler's right-hand man. The charge was treason, the only possible sentence death. And yet Han van Meegeren languished in his dank prison cell, incapable of uttering the words that would set him free: 'I am a forger.' This riveting account of greed, hubris, excess, treason and fine art is the story of a failed artist and the greatest forger of all time, who executed a swindle which earned him the equivalent of fifty million dollars and the acclaim of the very critics who had mocked him..
Price: $7.36 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Each book in the Crime Through Time series is hosted by a different child member of the famous Fitzmorgan detective family. While the young sleuth unravels a fictional mystery, readers learn about the real historical setting and actual crime-solving methods from the different eras. In sidebar activities, readers take on the role of assistant, helping to crack the case. Breathtakingly suspenseful but never violent and always age-appropriate, the books read like private investigative journals, with photos, maps, news clippings and crime scene sketches.

In Swindled!, Fitz is aboard one of those new Continental Express trains, bound from New York for San Francisco. As more and more people take sick from cyanide poisoning, Fitz and a new friend, Justine "the Judge" Pinkerton (of the famous crime-solving Pinkerton family) begin to unravel a wickedly ingenious plot involving a ring of money counterfeiters..
Price: $1.77 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Salmonella ...toxins ...additives ...food scares ...Have you ever wondered how our food has become so untrustworthy? Have we ever been able to trust what we eat? Via a fascinating mix of food politics, history and culinary detective work, Bee Wilson uncovers the many methods by which swindlers have tampered with our food throughout history. From the leaded wine of ancient Rome to the food piracy of the twenty-first century we see the extraordinary ways food has been padded, poisoned, spiked, coloured, substituted, faked and mislabelled everywhere it has been sold. Bee Wilson reveals the strong historical currents which enable the fraudsters to flourish; the battle of the science of deception against the science of detection; the struggle to establish reliable standards. She also suggests some small ways in which we can all protect ourselves from swindles and learn to trust what we eat again..
Price: $22.30 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This digital document is an article from Winnipeg Free Press, published by Thomson Gale on April 19, 2007. The length of the article is 559 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Woman's suit says she was swindled out of $3.6M.(Business)
Author: Gale Reference Team
Publication:Winnipeg Free Press (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 19, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Page: b7

Distributed by Thomson Gale.
Price: $9.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This digital document is an article from Epoca, published by Difusora de Informacion Periodica, S.A. (DINPESA) on July 2, 2000. The length of the article is 1210 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: DESBORDADAS Y ESTAFADAS.(TT: Overflowed and swindled.)
Author: Eva Reuss
Publication:Epoca (Magazine/Journal)
Date: July 2, 2000
Publisher: Difusora de Informacion Periodica, S.A. (DINPESA)
Page: 82

Distributed by Thomson Gale.
Price: $5.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]