You can't win: a story from life - Jack Black

Much of this book is about loneliness.

Yet its pages are bracingly companionable.

It is one of the friendliest books ever written.

It is a superb piece of autobiography, testimony that cannot be impeached.

While it is a statement of an American tragedy, it has laughter, brevity, style; as a book to pass the time away with, it is in a class with the best fiction.

-- Carl Sandburg, New York World Nothing half as rewarding has come down the highway of books about thieves, tramps, murderers, bootleggers and crooks in years -- New Republic I believe Jack Black has written a remarkable book; it is vivid and picturesque; it is not fiction; it is a book that was needed and it should be widely read.

-- Clarence Darrow, New York Herald Tribune A major influence on William S.

Burroughs and other Beat writers, this lost classic was written by Jack Black, a drifter and small-time criminal.

Born in 1872, Black hit the road at the age of 16 and spent most of his life as a vagabond.

In this plainspoken but colorful memoir, he recaptures a hobo underworld of the early twentieth century, a time when it was possible to pass anonymously from town to town.

Black's firsthand accounts of hopping trains, burglaries, prison, and drug addiction offer a compelling portrait of life outside the law and honor among thieves.