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Abby Ellin – DUPED : Double Lives, False Identities, And The Con Man I Almost Married
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DUPED : Double Lives, False Identities, And The Con Man I Almost Married

Abby Ellin
LIKE NEW, HARDCOVER

RM22.00

Offers Insight Into The Socially And Psychologically Complex Nature of Deceit As Well As The Choices Author Made As A Duped Woman

Remarks Free Cover-Pages Wrapping
ISBN 9781610398008
Book Condition LIKE NEW
Format HARDCOVER
Publisher PUBLICAFFAIRS
Publication Date 15 Jan 2019
Pages 272
Weight 0.60 kg
Dimension 24.5 × 16 × 3 cm
Availability: 1 in stock

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Description

Abby Ellin was shocked to learn that her fiancé leading a secret life. But as she soon discovered, the world is full of people who aren’t what they seem.
 
From Abby Ellin’s first date with the Commander, she was caught up in a whirlwind. Within six months he’d proposed, and they’d moved in together. But soon, his exotic stories of international espionage began to unravel. Finally, it all became clear: he was lying about who he was.
 
After leaving him and sharing her story, she was floored to find out that her experience was far from unique. People everywhere, many of them otherwise sharp-witted and self-aware, are being deceived by their loved ones every day.
 
In Duped, Abby Ellin studies the art and science of lying, talks to people who’ve had their worlds upended by duplicitous partners, and writes with great openness about her own mistakes. These remarkable stories reveal how often we encounter people whose lives beneath the surface are more improbable than we ever imagined.


In 2009, the journalist Abby Ellin fell in love with an unbelievable guy. He was a doctor involved with international humanitarian causes. He was a former Navy SEAL with connections to the Central Intelligence Agency and a chest full of medals from anti-terrorism black ops. He ran the medical unit at Guantánamo Bay. And, as we know from the start in Duped, all that (or most of it) was bunk: Her beau was a serial fabulist.
 
Abby Ellin was duped by a man called “The Commander”. He told her that he was a doctor with a secret job, he worked for the government and could not give her details about what his job ensued. He went on secret missions and sent her back amazing photos of his time fighting espionage overseas.
 
The only problem, he was not who he said he was, the photos were not his own and she believed his lies hook line and sinker…until one day she didn’t. She noted that “his stories were so ludicrous they had to be true.” She believed him but then started seeing things that did not add up. Then she began to slowly learn the truth and the depth of his deception.
 
After learning the truth, Abby, a journalist wrote about her experiences in an article published in Psychology Today (July 2015 magazine). After that article she was contacted by numerous individuals who had also been duped.
 
In the wake of this revelation, and the break-up, Ellin set out to understand what drove him to lie and why she fell for it, consulting the psychological literature, case studies of other con men and women, and her almost-husband’s previous victims.
 
The contextual material sometimes feels like padding, but at its best, the book is charged by curiosity about what people need from each other, and the lies and suspensions of disbelief that sometimes help them get it. This book details her experiences along with those of others.
 
Abby notes how lying is learned. She details how children hear their parents lying to friends on the phone (the old sorry, I’m not feeling well, I can’t make it today when in fact said parent just wants to stay home and binge watch Netflix), parents also tell their children to say that like gifts that they do not, to not tell someone they think they are overweight, to tell lies so as not to hurt someone’s feelings, etc.
 
Children grow up with tales about Pinocchio and what happens when you tell a lie and yet they see lying all the time. The Author even shares how she went out and purchased a 2.5 carat cubic zirconia ring to use as her engagement ring, letting people think the commander bought her a diamond. She was in fact duping her friends and relatives with her fake ring.
 
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KIRKUS REVIEW :
 
New York Times contributor Ellin (Teenage Waistland: A Former Fat Kid Weighs in on Living Large, Losing Weight, and How Parents Can (and Can’t) Help, 2005) investigates the art and science of duplicity.
 
The author’s fascination with liars and lying developed after a failed romance with “The Commander,” an ex–Navy Seal who claimed to be the high-level CIA operative mastermind behind the raid on Osama bin Laden. Dazzled by his charm and doctor credentials, Ellin believed everything he said.
 
When she realized that her lover had been lying about everything from his personal status—he was engaged to another woman during their relationship—to his income, she broke off their involvement. The author then began exploring how and why society regards those taken in by con artists “with scorn, derision, even blame.”
 
Drawing from research studies, interviews, and her own experiences, Ellin probes the phenomenon of lying. She begins with the premise that human beings are “social chameleons” who inhabit a “deceit spectrum.” Some lie to escape their own lives while others do it for predatory reasons.
 
Still others, like the notorious British double agent Kim Philby, do it for professional reasons. Comparing her own experience to those of other victims, Ellin learned that the feelings of betrayal victims feel are often so intense that they can result in PTSD. For women, who, the author argues, feel betrayal more deeply than men, it can have the same traumatizing effects “as sexual assault.”
 
Of course, females are every bit as deceitful as males, although society does not forgive them as easily as it does men. In the end and regardless of gender, people involved with con artists are complicit in their own victimization because they allow “willful blindness” or “self-doubt [to cloud] their suspicions.” Candid and entertaining, Ellin’s book offers insight into the socially and psychologically complex nature of deceit as well as the choices she made as a duped woman.
 
Lively, provocative reading.
 
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About the Author :
 
Abby Ellin is an award-winning journalist and the author of Teenage Waistland: A Former Fat Kid Weighs In On Living Large, Losing Weight and How Parents Can (and Can’t) Help. For five years she wrote the “Preludes” column about young people and money for the Sunday Money and Business section of the New York Times. She is also a regular contributor to the Health, Style, Business and Education sections of the New York Times.
 
Her work has been published in the New York Times Magazine, New York, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Psychology Today, Time, Newsweek, the Village Voice, the Boston Phoenix, Salon, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Spy (RIP). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College and a Masters in International Public Policy from Johns Hopkins University. As of this writing, her greatest accomplishments are summiting Kilimanjaro (with a broken wrist!) and naming “Karamel Sutra” ice cream for Ben and Jerry’s.
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