A gorgeously printed, in-depth history of "the tramp printer," a unionized wanderer who carried the skills and knowledge of the printing trade across the United States and beyond.

Gathered together from years of research and countless tramp-printer memoirs, The Tramp Printers: Forgotten Trails of the Traveling Typographers presents a fascinating and largely forgotten history while also looking at how similar issues of technology and worker's rights manifest today. By Portland printer and Eberhardt Press co-founder Charles Overbeck.

"The tramp printer was a typesetting troubadour with a story in lieu of a song, a hobo scholar, and a master of the type case. Carrying a union journeyman’s card and little else, these 'tourist' typographers criss-crossed the continent for more than a century, train-hopping from newspaper to job shop, following the railroad tracks like fish following a river, chasing the seasons like migrating birds." - from The Tramp Printers

204 pages, trade paperback.