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Jack   Black

Jack Black’s Followers (93)

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Jack Black


Born
in Canada
January 01, 1871

Died
January 01, 1932

Genre


John Black 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 (Macmillan, 1926) a memoir or sketched autobiography describing his days on the road and life as an outlaw. Black's book was written as an anti-crime book urging criminals to go straight but is also his statement of belief in the futility of prisons and the criminal justice system, hence the title of the book. Jack Black was writing from experience, having spent thirty years (fifteen of which were spent in various prisons) as a traveling criminal and offers tales of being a cross-country stick-up man, home burglar, petty thief, and opium fiend.

Jack Black is an essentially anonymous figure (ev
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Average rating: 4.33 · 4,826 ratings · 516 reviews · 3 distinct worksSimilar authors
You Can't Win

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4.33 avg rating — 4,828 ratings — published 1926 — 91 editions
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Gesetzbuch Und Ganovenehre

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it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 1930
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Stunning Statistics: 1

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Quotes by Jack Black  (?)
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“I was wrong. I knew I was wrong, and yet I persisted. If that is possible of any explanation it is this: From the day I left my father my lines had been cast, or I cast them myself, among crooked people. I had not spent one hour in the company of an honest person. I had lived in an atmosphere of larceny, theft, crime. I thought in terms of theft. Houses were built to be burglarized, citizens were to be robbed, police to be avoided and hated, stool pigeons to be chastised, and thieves to be cultivated and protected. That was my code; the code of my companions. That was the atmosphere I breathed. 'If you live with wolves, you will learn to howl.”
Jack Black, You Can't Win

“There were times when I thought I got a bit more punishment than was coming to me, but I don't regret a minute of it now. Each of us must be tempered in some fire. Nobody had more to do with choosing the fire that tempered me than myself, and instead of finding fault with the fire I give thanks that I had the metal to take the temper and hold it.”
Jack Black, You Can't Win

“Even at that age I had stumbled upon one truth, and that is, the best way to get misinformed is to ask a lot of questions.”
Jack Black, You Can't Win

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