A long time client of mine, who is also the most successful salesman I know, said that this is the only good book on selling he has ever read (and he claims to have looked at all the standard ones). The book describes the great swindles of the world (Spnanish Prisoner, Ponzi, etc.) from the point of view of what the swindler has to convince the mark of in order for the swindle to succeed. He then shows how the same principles apply to selling.

Arthur Leff was a brilliant philosopher/law professor at Yale Law School who died of cancer at age 48. Anything he wrote is worth reading, but this one is especially good, and is relevant to all the Spanish Prisoner-type scams that show up in email today (often in the form of "just a few dollars needed to release a fortune in a blocked account somewhere in Africa". Too bad it is out of print.

This is a classic of legal analysis, and a joy to read. Leff has a lucid prose style and a very interesting idea: that the line between "fraud" and "sales" is much less clear than either lawyers or consumers might think. Leff explains how the art of the deal consists of convincing buyers of exactly the same kinds of things that the art of fraud often involves. He leaves you with a new appreciation for the complexities, and sometimes incoherence, of much consumer regulation. This is not in any way a libertarian rant, or an argument against rules but rather a recognition that life is very complicated and a reminder of problems that won't go away