Brian Innes' Fakes & Forgeries (Reader's Digest, 2005) is a very basic introduction to the subject, taking a wide-angle view which encompasses everything from counterfeit money to identity theft to forged antiquities, art, and books. Unfortunately that breadth means that nothing gets covered in any great depth, and Innes' text is strangely disjointed: the narrative bounces around rather rapidly, and characters/topics blip in and out, sometimes without any introduction whatever. Occasionally the only mention of a given topic was in a picture caption, which also seemed slightly bizarre.

The best use of this book might be as an entry point into more research on a given area of the subject, although without any source notes, even that might be a stretch. Perhaps for the very casual reader, this would be a sufficient overview, but overall, I think there are better books out there.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2009/07/book-review-fakes-forgeries.html ( )

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