Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America [Paperback]

J. Anthony Lukas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 6, 1998

Hailed as "toweringly important" (Baltimore Sun), "a work of scrupulous and significant reportage" (E. L. Doctorow), and "an unforgettable historical drama" (Chicago Sun-Times), "Big Trouble" brings to life the astonishing case that ultimately engaged President Theodore Roosevelt, Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the politics and passions of an entire nation at century's turn.

After Idaho's former governor is blown up by a bomb at his garden gate at Christmastime 1905, America's most celebrated detective, Pinkerton James McParland, takes over the investigation. His daringly executed plan to kidnap the radical union leader "Big Bill" Haywood from Colorado to stand trial in Idaho sets the stage for a memorable courtroom confrontation between the flamboyant prosecutor, progressive senator William Borah, and the young defender of the dispossessed, Clarence Darrow.

"Big Trouble" captures the tumultuous first decade of the twentieth century, when capital and labor, particularly in the raw, acquisitive West, were pitted against each other in something close to class war.

Lukas paints a vivid portrait of a time and place in which actress Ethel Barrymore, baseball phenom Walter Johnson, and editor William Allen White jostled with railroad magnate E. H. Harriman, socialist Eugene V. Debs, gunslinger Charlie Siringo, and Operative 21, the intrepid Pinkerton agent who infiltrated Darrow's defense team. This is a grand narrative of the United States as it charged, full of hope and trepidation, into the twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In June 1997, just months before publication of his latest book, Big Trouble, Pulitzer-winning journalist J. Anthony Lukas killed himself. He was 64 and, according to many accounts, had finally surrendered to a lifelong despair over what he saw as his inability to meet his own exceedingly high literary standards.

Yet in reading Big Trouble, a gripping account of murder and politics in turn-of-the-century Idaho, one can't help but think that Lukas was far too hard on himself. His last work is a well-told tale of the struggle between labor and capitalists in the West at a time when entire state legislatures were effectively owned by corporate interests and America teetered on the brink of open class warfare.

The story begins with the 1905 assassination of Frank Steunenberg, an ex- governor of Idaho. His murder was rumored to be the work of vengeful labor bosses, and Pinkerton detective James McParland tracked Wobbly organizer Big Bill Haywood all the way to Colorado to bring him back to stand trial, where he and two other men were defended by a team of lawyers that included Clarence Darrow.

During the writing of Common Ground, his account of Boston's painful process of school desegregation in the 1970s, Lukas became intrigued by what he called race's "twin issue": class. "The more I delved into Boston's crisis," he writes in the foreword to Big Trouble, "the more I found the conundrums of race and class inextricably intertwined." Class simply wasn't as overt an issue as race in contemporary society. What Lukas needed was a time and place where class and class struggle were open and visible. He found it in Idaho in 1905, a time of change and uncertainty, when any notion of a large American middle class was still a distant dream. In order to make this era comprehensible to modern readers, Lukas has gone great lengths in Big Trouble to re-create the entire social, political, and economic context of the murder trial. Here are the histories not simply of mining, railroads, and unions, but of detectives, "modern" journalism, baseball, land speculation, and frontier-town boosterism. In its capacity to translate historical facts into an engrossing, insightful read, Big Trouble stands as a final testament to Lukas's well-deserved reputation as a top reporter of America's growing pains.

From Library Journal

Ostensibly, this account by the recently deceased Pulitzer Prize-winning Lukas is about the assassination in 1905 of a former Idaho governor, Frank Steunenberg, who called in the U.S. military to suppress a workers' strike in the Coeur d'Alene mining district in 1899. Three vengeful directors of the Western Federation of Miners?George Pettibone, Charles Moyer, and William Haywood?were accused of plotting the assassination. The ensuing trial featured such historical luminaries as Clarence Darrow, Pinkerton bad boy James McParland, and more. Lukas's anecdotal accounts of all the involved parties makes for riveting listening, and his story is, in a larger sense, a history of class warfare in the United States. Narrator Cotter Smith provides an appropriately somber tone that is nonetheless engaging. Most history collections will want a copy.?Mark Annichiarico, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 880 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (July 6, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684846179
• ISBN-13: 978-0684846170
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #557,187 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating book. Reads like fiction., August 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America (Paperback)

It was with great sadness that I learned of Anthony Lukas' death. Having been prompted by 'Big Trouble' to read his other prize winning book 'Common Ground', I am convinced we've lost a major talent and human being. Having lived in Boise, Idaho, this account of the murder of the Governor during the turn of the century was fascinating. Readers may be interested to know that the Idanha Hotel, where many of the key figures lived during the trial still bears their famous names on the room doors. The book is so exhaustively researched that details of conversations come out allowing it to be read almost like a novel. I found the diversions helpful in illuminating and embellishing the atmosphere and culture of the day. The beauty of this book is that you learn about so many different historical events and issues, not just the one at the center of the story. I highly recommend this book.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant overview of America 100 years ago, December 8, 2000

By 

John A. Lefcourte (Reno, NV USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America (Paperback)

Don't read this book if all you want to know about is the murder trial of Bill Haywood, defended by Clarence Darrow, and others- that is only the thread upon which the book hangs. The diversions are what make the book unique and which provide the varied dimensions that make one sense,and feel, in three dimensions, life at the turn of the last century. It is a stereopticon view. It is hard to conceive of any facet of turn-of-the-century American life which isn't explored, and described, in depth. If you don't like detail then avoid this book. I was constantly overwhelmed by the research that went into it, the amazing time and effort. The style is not dry but riveting and alive. It is a book that I wish I could say I produced, how anyone can give it less than five stars is beyond me. That the author committed suicide because he felt he failed is, truly, a tragedy, but it is impossible to see how he could have matched this effort in the rest of his lifetime. I read "Common Ground" when it first came out, the author's first book, it was good but this is great. I know of no other historical work that so totally conveys the sense of time and place as does this book.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ponderous - And worth every sidetrack, June 1, 2000

By 

Samuel W. Harnish, Jr. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America (Paperback)

This is a big book. I hear that if it wasn't for the editors it would be even larger. That much can be seen before you read it.

What can not be seen, and what it does better than any non-fiction book I've read in quite a while, is to tell the story of a time. What was the turn of the (last) century really like? Well, as you will find here, there was a lot going on. There's class warfare. There's corruption. There's a tremendous growth, and tremendous change.

If you want to know about all of these things, this is the book for you. If you want a quick recap of the trial that forms the "backbone" of the book, this is not the book. You will, from time to time, get frustrated by the side tracks, you will wonder why there is so much here about other things. If you stick with it, you will come away understanding many of the forces that led to the 'Progressive' reforms a couple decades later, and you will meet many very interesting people along the way.

Stick with it... You'll be glad you did.