1930s This book on hoboes and grifters takes up where "You Can't Win" leaves off. A fascinating true story of female hobo Boxcar Bertha's journey through the underbelly of the US in the Dust Bowl days. Covers thieving slang, prostitution & popular political movements of the time.

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Product Description

Another raging slab of real American history you're not likely to find in the textbooks. It's a window into a wildly under-appreciated dropout culture that gets left out of the stultifying fairytales that pass for history books—a much more rowdy and messily interesting tradition than the guardians of propriety, steeped in those other great American traditions of puritanism and hypocrisy, let on. Hobo jungles, bughouses, whorehouses, Chicago's Main Stem, IWW meeting halls, skid rows and open freight cars—these were the haunts of the free thinking and free loving Bertha Thompson. This vivid autobiography recounts one hell of a rugged woman's hard-living depression-era saga of misadventures with pimps, hopheads, murderers, yeggs, wobblies and anarchists.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #651007 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

About the Author
Dr. Ben Reitman (1880-1942) was an eccentric physician in Chicago in the early 1900s - hobo, whorehouse physician, anarchist agitator, and lover/show manager of Emma Goldman, Reitman was a mighty interesting character in his own right.

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Customer Reviews

A ripoff!
"Everything I had set out in life to do I had accomplished. I had wanted to
know how it felt to be a hobo, a radical, a prostitute, a thief, a reformer,
a social worker and a revolutionist. Now, I knew."

With an ending like the above, you've gotta bet that the prior 200 pages are
a fun read.

This book is more-or-less the contemporary of that classic 1930's anti-drug
movie "Refer Madness". We encounter dope fiends, perverts, dreamers,
anarchists, abortionists and many others.

I do, so much, love reading about degenerate behavior!

Somewhere in the folds is a statement that Capitalism is evil. "Sure
society has a right to defind itself. Society has the right to send me to
jail if they get the goods on me. But I've got to eat and sleep and my
child has to have his. I don't justify myself. I know I'm wrong. I know my
example is bad. But I'm so short on funds, I have to".

So, I'm reading along. 100 pages. 200 pages. Thinking to myself, hmmm
.... this woman sure had a lot of adventures in her life.

Then ... incredible, annoying, foulness! An afterward is appended to the
text by the publisher.

"In this, the 4th time that Boxcar Bertha has been reissued, we feel obliged
for the first time to make it plain that this is in fact a work of fiction.
This takes nothing away from the book as far as we are concerned."

BALONEY! What the...?!?! I could understand if they'd let the title
stand (after all, we know that the "Autobiography of Miss Jane Pitman" is a
novel) but why did they have to leave the binding classification as
"Autobiography"???

I feel so violated. I wouldn't have invested the time if I'd know from the
start that it was fiction. This story is only good if it's true ...
there're a dozen places where I'd have thrown the book down because of
unbelievable-ness if I'd known it were fiction.

Doesn't matter that it's fiction
Take it with a grain of salt. It's an interesting look at hoboism, sex, drugs, pimping, anarchy and Depression era Americana. I remember reading this book at the laundromat in Alhambra. It was quite a page turner. It doesn't matter that it's fiction disguised as an autobiography. It's still a fun read.

fact or fiction? whos cares, poor writing is poor writing.
Getting through this book is going to take more patience than I am willing to muster. The stories told in Boxcar Bertha have so much more potential than their author lets them realize. The writing is just so awful that it completely smothers the narrative -or network of micro-narratives that make up this book. It is one of the most non-engaging adventure stories I have ever read. The author took license to write a fictional story and pass it off as autobiography, at least they could have made more of an effort to be entertaining.
I keep trying to push through Boxcar Bertha because I feel like it will lend some sort of relevant insight into marginal life in the Depression, but I don't think I can do it.
Not to mention the dubious nature of the male author attempting to portray the voice of a radical woman. What's next, privileged whites writing in the voices of radical blacks? Will that pass as meaningful, authentic work with the publishers of the radical left as well? I hope not.