Another raging slab of real American history you're not likely to find in the textbooks. This is second title in the new (and best-selling ) Nabat series that debuted with Jack Black's "You Can't Win." It's a window into a wildly under-appreciated dropout culture that gets left out of the stultifying fairytales that pass for history books a much more rowdy and messily interesting tradition than the guardians of propriety, steeped in those other great American traditions of puritanism and hypocrisy, let on. Hobo jungles, bughouses, whorehouses, Chicago's Main Stem, IWW meeting halls, skid...

Criminal exploits, secret agent intrigue, and clever -disguises fill the pages of Francois Eugene Vidocq s memoirs. A legendary figure in history, Vidocq is known as the first detective and an inspiration to great writers such as Honore de Balzac, Victor Hugo and Edgar Allen Poe. As a player in the criminal underworld, Vidocq is a master of disguises and an accomplished thief, eventually turning his unlawful talents toward catching criminals as the first French chief of secret police. Playing both sides of the law, Vidocq s life highlights the blurry line between law enforcement and the...