You Can't Win is an autobiography

Autobiography

An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...

 by adventurer Jack Black

Jack Black (author)

Jack Black, born 1871 in Vancouver but raised from infancy in Missouri, was a late 19th century/early 20th century hobo and professional burglar, living out the dying age of the Wild West. He wrote You Can't Win a memoir or sketched autobiography describing his days on the road and life as an...

. The book tells of his experiences in the hobo underworld, freight hopping around the still Wild West of the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, becoming a burglar and member of the yegg brotherhood, getting hooked on opium

Opium

Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...

, doing stints in jail

Prison

A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...

, and escaping, often with the assistance of crooked cops or judges. The book was a best seller in 1926

1926 in literature

The year 1926 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Bread Loaf Writers' Conference is founded in Middlebury, Vermont....

. It has been republished in 2000 in the Nabat series of radical autobiographies, by AK Press

AK Press

AK Press is a worker-managed independent publisher and book distributor that specialises in radical left and anarchist literature. It is collectively owned and operated.-History:...

. William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...

 cited it as an extremely influential book in his life, and lifts the book's style and stories in his 1953 book Junkie

Junkie (novel)

Junkie is a 1953 semi-autobiographical novel by William S. Burroughs. It was his first published novel and has come to be considered a seminal text on the lifestyle of heroin addicts in the early 1950s. Burroughs' working title was Junk.-Inspiration:The novel was considered unpublishable more than...

. Burroughs himself wrote the introduction to the AK Press reissue of the book. On the copyright page is a message from the publishers that any convict can obtain a copy of the book by mailing them ten dollars and a contact address (the list price is sixteen US dollars or eleven British pounds).

Publication history

• Black, Jack. You Can't Win. New York: Macmillan Company, 1926. Foreword by Robert Herrick.
• _____. You Can't Win: the Autobiography of Jack Black. New York: Amok Press, 1988. Foreword by William S. Burroughs. ISBN 0941693074
• _____. Du kommst nicht durch. Berlin : Kramer, 1998. ISBN 3879562407
• _____. You Can't Win. 2nd edition. Edinburgh: AK Press
  AK Press
  AK Press is a worker-managed independent publisher and book distributor that specialises in radical left and anarchist literature. It is collectively owned and operated.-History:...
  
  /Nabat books, 2000. ISBN 1902593022
• _____. You Can't Win. [S.l.] : BN Publishing, 2007. ISBN 9562915093