Description: Accidentally, On Purpose is the first book to document America's most peculiar criminal underworld, an empire built from the raw material of faked personal injuries. Ken Dornstein takes readers back to the eighteenth century when wealthy ship owners scuttled ships for the insurance on the cargo, introduces them to one of the earliest slip-and-fall artists, "Banana Anna, " details the excesses of self-mutilation for profit during the Depression, and casts a clear eye on the whiplash industry of the 1960s and 1970s. Dornstein reports on contemporary gangs whose members stage car accidents for insurance money and the doctors and lawyers who call the shots from behind the scenes.

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