Title: Duped Pdf Double Lives, False Identities, and the Con Man I Almost Married
Abby Ellin was shocked to learn that her fiancé was leading a secret life. But as she soon discovered, the world is full of people who aren't what they seem.
From Abby Ellin's first date with the commander, she was caught up in a whirlwind. Within six months, he'd proposed and they'd moved in together. But soon, his exotic stories of international espionage began to unravel. Finally, it all became clear: He was lying about who he was.
After leaving him and sharing her story, she was floored to find out that her experience was far from unique. People everywhere, many of them otherwise sharp-witted and self-aware, are being deceived by their loved ones every day.
In Duped, Abby Ellin studies the art and science of lying, talks to people who've had their worlds upended by duplicitous partners, and writes with great openness about her own mistakes. These remarkable stories reveal how often we encounter people whose lives beneath the surface are more improbable than we ever imagined.
Hey Jon Ronson, there's a new kid on your block. Watch out! First, I listened to this on audiobook and enjoyed the narrator immensely. And thank you, publisher, for releasing this as a CD, a format that has fallen out of favor. Digital is fine if you listen anywhere but I only listen in my car. Digital is a pain and dangerous there. But I digress...I'm a big fan of well-researched non-fiction books in which the author plays a key role in the journey, like Jon Ronson's work. I instantly fell for Abby Ellin's DUPED. Her riveting story is merely the springboard for a much deeper look at the subject of duplicity both large and seemingly small. I found myself re-listening to portions so I could accurately recall them to friends. This would be an excellent book club read.Primarily anecdotes of liars and their victims, with little analysis Years ago, on a blind date, the young man and I discovered we had a mutual acquaintance. I'll call her Lucy, and she'd been a housemate of mine for about a year. "So sad about her husband and son and that car bomb," he said. "Why are you laughing? That's horrible." And it would have been horrible if true, but when I'd lived with her two years before, the only husband I'd heard about was the groom she said she'd ditched the night before the wedding after being caught in bed with two of the fourteen bridesmaids."Did she tell you about the kidney transplant? " I asked."No it was brain surgery," he said. "That steel plate sets off metal detectors."And so it was with interest I picked up Duped, hoping to find out what makes people like Lucy and Ellin's Commander tick. Abby Ellin writes in a breezy, self-deprecating style. (She'd have to - she almost married a guy who told her on their first date that he'd examined Osama Bin Laden at Gitmo and even the President didn't know he'd been captured. Super secret - shhhhhhhh.) With an extensive list of footnoted sources, Ellin has compiled a collection of dupers and dupees and quotes various psychologists on why some people like to lie.Maybe there's not one, but it bothered me a bit that Ellin seems to make little distinction between self-aggrandizing fabulists like the Commander and adulterers, embezzlers and fugitives. I get why people lie not to get caught at something, although the scale of deception in some of her anecdotes is truly mind-boggling. I wanted insights into the people who make up stuff just because. She's also more sympathetic to liars like eco-terrorist Peter Young and double agent Kim Philby than I would be. "Oh to have such loyalty to a cause greater than myself!" (p 56, ARC). She never once mentions the hundreds of people killed thanks to Philby's information. Later in the book she talks about the PTSD suffered by Bernie Madoff's victims, but couches it in terms of an emotional response to betrayal (many of them were "Jewish, like Madoff") rather than the shattering of their financial stability. Both of those omissions are books on their own, but the lack of acknowledgement rankled.The book touches briefly on people who lie about their gender or gender preferences, which leads to a discussion about blaming the dupe. There's a chapter on women liars, and the book wraps up with a look at the dubious usefulness of polygraphs. A few casual digs at Republicans and the Trump administration are scattered as humor and will ultimately date the book. Overall I'd been hoping for more psychology and fewer anecdotes.Think you can't be Duped. Think again. Abby Ellin tells such a riveting story of being duped, you won't be able to put her new book down. What I love is she doesn't blame and shame. When a woman is conned, everyone blames the victim. But Ellin doesn't. She tackles the trauma of being duped with empathy. This isn't just her story; she uses her reporting chops to tell other people's stories too, including that of double agent Kim Philby's treachery. I gobbled it up.
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