The free-thinking andfree-loving ways of hobo Bertha Thompson, and the rowdy and funky world conjured in this book, were all too much for the guardians of propriety when it was first published in 1937. Swapping tales around the campfire, in hobo jungles, hanging out on free love commune farms and in artistic circles in Greenwich Village, working in a whore house, circulating among tramps, yeggs, pimps, bohemians, wobblies and other radicals; despite the plentiful woes, this is a portrait of an entrancing world, and a fascinating woman. It's a window into a wildly underappreciated dropout culture that gets left out of history books. This edition has a new afterward by Barry Pateman thaty fills in the background of the book and that of Dr. Ben Reitman.