[This review initially posted on7 Dec 2012.]
You Can’t Win by Jack Black is a memoir of life among the “yeggs,” an American subculture that existed for decades in the early twentieth century, with tens of thousands of members pretty well hidden from the society at large. Today, the slang term “yegg” has become synonymous with “safe cracker.” A hundred years ago, yeggs were vagabonds who traveled by hopping freights, convened in the hobo jungles that sprang up on the outskirts of towns that had railroad yards, and lived primarily by committing small-time theft. Continue reading Jack Black’s You Can’t Win: On the Vagabond Life