It’s all in “The Big Con,” David W. Maurer’s definitive 1940 study of the American confidence man. This paperback edition is its first reprint. Luc Sante, the author of “Low Life,” brought the book to the attention of the publishers and also supplied the introduction, in which he describes Maurer’s work as a combination of linguistics, criminology, folklore and social history as well as “a robust and spring-heeled piece of literature.” I found it a perfect companion to my favorite forgotten classics of dark American life in the early decades of this century: “The Dictionary of the Underworld” by Eric Partridge, “You Can’t Win” by Jack Black, Tom Kromer’s “Waiting for Nothing” and Boxcar Bertha’s “Sister of the Road.”

Maurer was a linguist who set out to do a study of underworld vernacular; he ended up writing a full-blown story of the con artists’ world that flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. This was a time when money could be — and was — made fast, sometimes on a tip from a stranger you met in a Pullman train car. It was also the heyday of the grifter, who dressed well and frequented the smoking cars, spotted gullible (if not greedy) marks, roped them in, then trimmed them for all they were worth. Grifters might play the short con, which took the marks for whatever cash they had on hand. But the prize game was the big con, when they sent the suckers home to get the loot.

There were fat targets everywhere in America, and grifters took them down through schemes supposedly involving fixed horse races, fixed prizefights or inside stock tips — all of which ended, of course, by going bad for the marks. The prerequisites to any of these cons were that the mark have plenty of money, want to make more — and be willing to cheat. Nearly all the ruses employed a so-called big store, or fake betting house. Set up with all the trappings, it must have been marvelous to see: betting windows, chalkboards for race results, a ticker-tape machine, smoke-filled rooms and up to several dozen actors, from the inside man running the show and the roper who brought the mark in to the bit players and extras, all doing their part for a percentage of the score. It was a playhouse, a theater, a world of make-believe — to everyone but the mark.

In a truly successful con, the mark didn’t realize he’d been trimmed. He’d simply tried to cheat a betting house, he thought, and he’d lost — he could hardly run to the law. But if by some chance he did, often enough the police were in on the con for their share, too.

If all this reminds you of a movie, it should. According to Sante’s introduction, “The Big Con” inspired the popular 1973 movie “The Sting.” It may also remind you of something else. “Con men,” Maurer wrote, “following trends current in the legitimate world, have employed techniques very similar to those used by big business ”

The best story is “Hours of Darkness.” And “Lurch.” And the soul-freezing “Tongue.” And most of the others. You see what I mean. Purists will say that some of the short ones aren’t stories, and they may be right. Perhaps moments like “Thistle Story,” “The Big Man That Dropped Dead” and “Jesus Fuckeroo” are nothing more than pieces of a whole. So what? Skip over them if you want — but if you do, make it a point to go back, because they are indeed pieces of the whole.

Whether you take it in pieces or a single gulp, take it all in before you judge, because McLean’s landscape is a wide one. Among his other books, he wrote an allegorical tale about a psychotic janitor — and followed it up with a documentary travelogue on Texas swing music, for Christ’s sake!

It seems there’s always something more with McLean. His own story is one of those background bits that aren’t essential to the books, but you still like knowing. He was a janitor in Edinburgh when he and some friends started typing up their stories in booklets, called themselves the Clocktower Press and sent the stuff out to writers and artists and just about anyone else they could think of. Then one night McLean was giving a reading and a London editor was there. He asked to see everything McLean had written — and proceeded to publish it as “Bucket of Tongues.”

In the meantime, McLean kept turning out the booklets, which included work by James Kelman, Alan Warner, Janice Galloway and some chapters of an odd novel called “Trainspotting” by Irvine Welsh. The rest is, well, you know.

I’d like to call this a rags-to-riches tale, but McLean hasn’t hit big yet in the States. Last I heard, he was living up in Orkney — that’s off the northern coast of Scotland — working at a bookstore or hustling after some other job. I hear he’s got a new book coming out in the U.K. this year. I don’t know what it’s about. But I’ll read it. I’ll read his books any time.

But not quite. Some 40-odd years after Courthope’s death, Holland strikes a deal with England in recompense for taking the island. The Dutch hand over a different island in a different hemisphere, an island called Manhattan. And New Amsterdam becomes New York.

That’s the distilled version of this history by Giles Milton. The full version has more, a lot more. The pages are filled with graphic descriptions of long-term sea travel and the brutality of the explorers toward the natives (and one another), as well as of the avarice and petty jealousies of those who oversaw early global trade. There’s a lot of background here — almost too much: Milton gives biographies for nearly all the players, both major and minor, with detailed descriptions not only of what they did but also of the motives behind their actions.

Some of the descriptions are terrifying: The graphic accounts of Inquisition-like tortures (taken from actual diaries and logs) are more disturbing than anything we see on film today. I actually woke up late one night, sweating from nightmares of being chased by interrogators with pointed beards hurling hot irons and uttering the most heathen and horrible threats.

But I’m sure the movie people will temper that part, or at least find ways to make it fit their formula. Everything they’ll need is in there, even the basis for a love interest — an Armenian Christian woman who married an English captain. Just move her over to the besieged island, hook her up with Courthope and get ready to pull out the hankies.

None of it will, of course, have anything to do with history, much less with what actually happened. But if it’s handled with at least a token measure of intelligence, a movie could draw attention to the book. And we all know that, as usual, the book is better.