Trachtenberg points out that Alger almost certainly consulted New York City guidebooks and incorporated their advice on crooks, cheats, and conmen into his manuscript, and explains that Alger's series books and characters bear similarities to the anecdotal nature of myths, legends, and folktales: "Stories of gods and of larger-than-life persons like Paul Bunyan have an anecdotal quality similar to the sequence of encounters, adventures, confrontations, and coincidences that comprise the narratives of "Ragged Dick" and "Tattered Tom" and their kin among Alger's legion of boy heroes."