Introduction

Good Company, fi rst published in 1982, was based on fi eldwork within an American subculture about which little was known at the time. The subject was tramps who rode freight trains, drank on skid rows and worked on the fringes of the American economy. The book was also one of the fi rst sociological fi eld studies to rely extensively on photographs. In addition, Good Company was written as a narrative, then unusual in ethnography. In part for these reasons the book won a wide audience, both in the United States and in French and Italian translations.