Reddit reviews A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York

For those looking for an amazing history book about a pickpocket that becomes a successful con man, read:

A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York.

I know you guys are all clamoring for some history book recommendations.

You might want to check out A Pickpocket's Tale. I read it years ago, and didn't adore it, but found the approach interesting. They obviously didn't have a huge amount of information on the titular character, so they would find a record that mentioned him being arrested in a specific bar, then fill the pages with newspaper accounts of other things that had happened in that bar around that time period to really flesh out what it was like there, other people he likely knew or encountered, etc... I've often thought it was a good way of painting a picture without a ton of info.