The tramp in America

A history of the tramp in American culture from the mid-nineteenth century into modern times, which explores its subject from a variety of angles: defining the tramp socially, sexually, visually, criminally and through humor. Tramps emerge as threatening figures, their essential mobility challenging the ordered spaces and places of American society, providing an antidote to the often-repeated notion that mobility, in a positive form, is central to American identity.