You Can't Win

by Jack Black

Overview

Our lost history is revived in this legendary book, which was a bestseller in 1926 and has hovered at the edge of our memory ever since. The favorite book of William Burroughs, it is a journey into the hobo underworld, through freight hopping around the still-Wild West, becoming a highwayman and member of the yegg (criminal) brotherhood, getting hooked on opium, and doing stints in jail or escaping, often with the assistance of crooked cops or judges. The book includes an afterword by Michael Discend, who tells what became of Jack after the book was written (he gave up the outlaw life and moved to San Francisco).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780486835419
Publisher:	Dover Publications
Publication date:	10/17/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	835 KB

About the Author

The traveling criminal known as Jack Black was born in 1872 and disappeared in 1932. Black spent most of his life as a petty thief, opium addict, and convict. His matter-of-fact autobiography, You Can't Win, was published in 1926, and its stranger-than-fiction accounts of hobo life exercised an enormous influence on William Burroughs and other Beat novelists.