Tramping žije!
Tramping lives on!

Summary/Abstract: The monograph titled "Český tramping v časech formování a rozmachu" [Czech tramping in times of formation and upswing] (Prague: Academia, 2019), which is a work of five authors (Jan Krško, Jan Mareš, Jan Pohunek, Jan Randák and Jan Špringl), presents the phenomenon of tramping in the inter-war Czechoslovak Republic. In doing so, it focuses on the Czech lands and, in the reviewer’s opinion,offers a more or less basic mapping of the fluid and difficult-to-grasp social movement and also a specific subculture of young people, which were born out of romantic admiration of the American Wild West, forming their identity and lifestyle in a strong bond with nature, and were widely popular after the birth of Czechoslovakia in 1918. The authors describe, relatively well, the self-perception and topography of tramping, how tramps were spending their free time and clashing with state authorities, their identification against the “bourgeois” society, ironizing and moralizing of the tramping movement, the step-by-step politicization of some tramping groups, and the penetration of tramping into popular culture. On the other hand, the reviewer argues that the book does not explain ideological sources of the movement clearly enough and does not answer the question why the tramping movement became a phenomenon unique to Czechs and Slovaks.

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