You Can't Win

2021 Reprint of the 1926 Edition. Illustrated with photos of contemporary Hobo and Migrant life. You Cant Win is an autobiography by burglar and hobo Jack Black written in the early to mid-1920s and first published in 1926. It describes Blacks life on the road in prison and his various criminal capers in the American and Canadian west from the late 1880s to early 20th century. The book was a major influence upon William S. Burroughs and other Beat writers. The book tells of Blacks experiences in the hobo underworld freight-hopping around the western United States and Canada with the majority of incidents taking place from the late 1880s to around 1910. He tells of becoming a thief burglar and member of the yegg (safe-cracking) subculture exploring the topics of crime criminal justice vice addictions penology and human folly from various viewpoints from observer to consumer to supplier and from victim to perpetrator.