Madcaps, Screwballs, and Con Women is the first study to explore the cultural work performed by female tricksters in the "new country" of American mass consumer culture. Beginning with nineteenth-century novels such as The Hidden Hand, or Capitola the Madcap and moving through twentieth-century fiction, film, radio, and television, Lori Landay looks at how popular heroines use craft and deceit to circumvent the limitations of femininity.

She considers texts of the 1920s such as the silent film It and Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes; pre- and post-Production Code Mae West films, Depression-era screwball comedy, and wartime comedy; the postwar television series I Love Lucy; and such contemporary texts as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Ellen, Batman Returns, and Sister Act. In addition, Landay explores the connections between these texts and advertisements selling products that encourage female deception and trickery.

When these texts are seen in a continuum, they tell a powerful story about woman's place and women's power during the sexual desegregation of American society.