A fascinating read about fakes, forgeries, and frauds.

What's real? What's fake? Why do we care?

In this time of false news and fake science, these questions are more important than ever. Fakes, Forgeries, and Frauds goes beyond the headlines, tweets, and blogs to explore the true nature of authenticity and why it means so much today.

This book delivers nine fascinating true stories that introduce the fakers, forgers, art authenticators, and others that populate this dark world.

Examples include:
• Shakespeare—How an enterprising teenager in the 1790s faked Shakespeare and duped Literary London.
• Rembrandt—How art history, connoisseurship, and science are re-shaping our view of what Rembrandt painted and how the canvas changed over time.
• Relics—Was Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music, a real Roman teenager who was martyred 1,800 years ago in the same place where her church stands today?
• Jackson Pollock—How do experts pick out the real Pollocks from the thousands of fakes?
• Nuremberg—How repeated reconstructions of medieval Nuremburg—including one by Adolf Hitler—show how historic preservation became a tool for propaganda.
Fakes, Forgeries, and Frauds also raises provocative questions about the meaning of reality. What happens when spiritual truth conflicts with historic fact? Can an object retain its essence when most of it was replaced? Why did some art patrons value an excellent copy more than the original? Why do we find fakes so eternally fascinating, and forgers such appealing con artists?

Fakes, Forgeries, and Frauds is a full-color book with 30 color photos. It shows that reality, exemplified by discrete physical objects, is actually mutable, unsettling, and plainly weird. Readers discover things that are less than meets the eye—and might even reconsider what's real, what's fake, and why they should care.

一本关于假货、赝品和欺诈的精彩读物。

什么是真的？什么是假的？我们为什么要关心？

在这个假新闻和假科学的时代，这些问题比以往任何时候都更重要。超越了头条新闻、推特和博客，探讨了真实性的真正本质，以及为什么它在今天如此重要。

本书提供了九个引人入胜的真实故事，介绍了造假者、伪造者、艺术品鉴定者和其他充斥着这个黑暗世界的人。

例子包括。

- 莎士比亚--17世纪90年代一个有进取心的少年如何伪造莎士比亚并欺骗了伦敦文学界。

- 伦勃朗--艺术史、鉴赏家和科学如何重新塑造我们对伦勃朗绘画的看法，以及画布是如何随时间变化的。

- 遗迹--音乐的守护神圣塞西莉亚是一个真实的罗马少女，她在1800年前就在今天她的教堂所在的地方殉道了吗？

- 杰克逊-波洛克-专家们如何从成千上万的赝品中挑选出真正的波洛克？

- 纽伦堡--中世纪纽伦堡的反复重建--包括阿道夫-希特勒的重建--表明历史保护是如何成为宣传工具的。

《赝品、伪造品和欺诈品》还提出了关于现实意义的挑衅性问题。当精神真理与历史事实发生冲突时，会发生什么？当一件物品的大部分被替换时，它能保留其本质吗？为什么有些艺术赞助人对优秀的复制品比原作更看重？为什么我们会发现赝品是如此永恒的魅力，而伪造者是如此吸引人的骗子？

《赝品、伪造品和欺诈品》是一本带有30张彩色照片的全彩书。它表明，以离散的实物为例，现实实际上是易变的、令人不安的，而且很奇怪。读者会发现一些不那么令人满意的东西--甚至会重新考虑什么是真的，什么是假的，以及为什么他们应该关心。