Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I'm a police officer with the City of Caldwell, Idaho. When we first moved to the city (approximately 35,000 now)we lived one block from the old Stubenburg residence.

From a purely personal view point I found the book to be fascinating. The details were necessary. The book gives you an in-depth look at a specific time in the country's history. The extensive backgrounds that he provided for the many characters were also essential. For not only do they help the reader to understand the involved people, but their pasts also help to explain why the nation was like it was in 1906.

In many respects the book is almost an anti-western. By 1906 the Western United States was no longer the frontier, but many still viewed it that way. However the so-called "modern" world was now a presence. All the many social issues that we are still dealing with were a very real concern for those people in 1906 as well.

I feel that Lukas did an excellent job showing this time and the many tensions that exsisted. And whether he meant to or not Lukas also showed that we aren't so far removed from our ancestors. They too were convinved that their time was the worst and that the world was going to hell in a handbasket.

All the information about what this book is about is covered already. I just want to state that those who find this encompassing story in need of an editor to reduce detail or think of episodes in this work divergent are missing an important aspect of this book: it is well paced and told in marvelous detail--paced as in turn-of-the-century, horsedrawn, strolling paced; and detailed to the extent an important historical event should be. This isn't CNN. But the feel of life 100 years ago is here. The older I get, the less distant that seems as far as time, but how incredibly different in lifestyle. If you approach it that way, it's a journey. If you suffer a dose of paranoia about big business and big government, this isn't going to help. It names names and spells out the behind the doors power movement. I was reading it during the courtroom frenzy over counting election votes in Florida. Some things haven't changed all that much.

Having grown up in Boise, Idaho I can only say that I was mesmerized by the detail with which Lukas decorates this tale of "murder and mayhem."

The Idanha Hotel, with its victorian spires and striped brick facade always loomed large in my childhood imagination. Now, thanks to "Big Trouble" it is peopled with the characters that made it famous (or infamous): the "Great Detective" McParland, his gunfighter bodyguard Charlie Siringo, the famous lawyer Clarence Darrow, along with the rest of the assorted characters which make this book such a treat to read.

And it is this cast of characters which brings this book to life. In his acknowledgments Lukas mentions that as a reporter he is accustomed to talking to the living people who make today's events happen. In writing "Big Trouble" he has followed his instincts and through characterizations better than most novelists writing today, he has managed to breathe life back into these long-dead participants.

Other reviewers have made clear the similarities between this history and fiction. It is true that the style which Lukas brings to this story reads like fiction, but I personally found it more interesting than any fiction I have read lately. These are true, important events, and, though highly readable (the various coffee cup rings, food stains, ripped covers and water damage from reading in the tub which my copy endured is testament to that), this book is not fiction, nor does Lukas ever treat it as such.

For a glimpse into the life of this dusty, western town at the turn of the century and the events swirling around it I recomend this book without reservations.

Big Trouble is a thick, digressive read that requires physical and mental stamina. For the experienced reader only.

For the first 100 pages, the digressions into every day life in 19th century America seem a maddening distraction, but then the reader begins to think and see the book in terms of the period it describes. What nobler acheivement for an historian?

Ostensibly the book is an account of the assasination of a former Idaho govenor by the Western Federation of Miners and the labor leaders capture and subseguent trial in Bosie. While it is a revealing labor history of the west at the turn of the last century, it also explores personal ambition, bomb making, capsule biograhies of everyone involved from Alan Pinkerton to Clarence Darrow, ehtnic newspapers in New York, the role of faternal organizations in settling the west, the poetry of Edgar Lee Masters (law partner to Darrow), widespread corruption caused by the bloody labor-capital wars, and much more.

As another reviewer pointed out, Big Trouble is a book begging to be hyper-texted.

Although the book is flawed in some ways it is an education in the best sense and you will miss a truly great achievement in passing it by.

After finishing Big Trouble the reader is left to wonder what impossible literary standard Lukas had in mind when he killed himself only hours after giving the manuscript to his publisher.

Lukas's Big Trouble is about the assassination of a former Idaho governor at his home, just after the turn of the last century. Lukas's Big Trouble is about just about everything that happened in the U.S. in the 50 years before the "main event."

You can read this book on two levels: (1) follow the straight narrative of the murder and the subsequent trial or (2) follow the book from beginning to end as it diverts and digresses filling in an entire back story to the murder.

Ranging from a history of the Pinkerton detective agency (and its involvement in the Pennsylvania coal fields in the 19th century), to the Buffalo soldiers, to the Civil War and the Spanish American War, and the history of Colorado mining and labor relations, this is an incredibly detailed and comprehensive work.

It bogs down a bit in some places, but it contains a generally lively narrative, and is an engaging read. If somebody would undertake it, this could be converted to a great hypertext work (just click on the reference in the main text and read all about the detail).

Having lived in Idaho only five years, I found Big Trouble to be an extremely interesting book. I actually live in the Coeur d'Alenes, in Wallace, only 10 miles from the Bunker Hill Concentrator in Wardner and about 6 miles from Burke, and, although I had heard of the mining wars, and a little about the Steunenburg assasination, I had no idea of the national attention this incident received, much less coming close to instigating a Socialist revolution. I learned a lot from reading this book. I will admit that the author does go off on tangents, which may seem annoying at first, but eventually, one gets to see the point, and they actually begin to become interesting. Lukas is giving a good overview of the period, so that we can fully experience the situation, and dive right in, along with Haywood, Borah, Darrow and McParland, and, in a sense, experience the trial with them. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in Idaho history!

Having survived 4 readings of this gargantuan treatise, I feel eminently qualified to tell you that this book is worth it. I have read many of the books in the bibliography and can tell you that Mr. Lukas did a fantastic job of synthesizing all of the material into one vision. Unfortunately, you have to do some of the work yourself as the story constantly goes down one rabbit trail after another--something that probably cost the author his life. Pulitzer Prize-winning author J. Anthony Lukas committed suicide just as this book was being published, leaving those of us who live in the area this all happened (and were awaiting special book signing events) in more shock and dismay than it did most. Whereas his earlier successes maintained a razor sharp focus on the task at hand, this one is a bit jumbled and more than one person has speculated that he felt that self-loathing feeling that older authors like Hemmingway just don't tolerate. However, I don't believe this was the author's fault so much as the complexity of the subject. It is from this century old murder in my adopted home town that the labor movement of not only the United States, but even the world, has been affected to this day. The cast of characters is nothing short of astounding, given the humble rural setting, from Drew Barrymore's ancestor Ethel Barrymore to Hall of Famer Walter Johnson to a young Clarence Darrow to the infamous Pinkerton "Molly McGuire" instigator James McParland. Unlike the local conservative-slanted "sanitized" versions, this book pulls no punches in either camp, from eventual Soviet hero William D. "Big Bill" Haywood's womanizing to the involvement of victim Frank Stunenberg in a timber scandal that would eventually be part of what kept Idaho's Frank Borah from becoming our state's first president. For any citizen of Caldwell, the first chapter is required reading, that not only gives us insight into how the corrupt founding of our city has led to the local rivalries of today, but also into simpler times when even a bank owner had to milk his own cows. The rest of the world should understand how this trial (and the illegal methods used to prosecute the defendants) parallels our troubles today. Give this book the time and dedication it deserves and you won't regret it. Also, you can try the drier Debaters and Dynamiters: The Story of the Haywood Trial or read up on Roughneck: The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood or A Texas Cowboy: or, Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony (Penguin Classics) by Pinkerton cowboy Charlie Siringo, who has perhaps one of the most authentic voices of the "wild" west.