Rating: 
Summary: Good book, you may learn what was left out in histoy classs.
Review: A very good and a very interesting book. I enjoyed it very much. There is a lot of history and understanding that I missed in school. You may find that corruption and wrong doing in American and in local politics is not unique to the this decade. If you like this book and want to read a related book also set in the northwest check out "Two Rooms : The Life of Charles Erskine Scott Wood" by Robert Hamburger; Paperback
Rating: 
Summary: A Journey
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A Journey
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent , balanced investigation of mostly hidden episode
Review: As a labor lawyer, and native of Homestead,Pa., I thought I was very familiar with U.S. labor history. Lukas reveals the events in Idaho with a skill and tenacity that is eye-popping for even the most-seasoned reader in this area. The turn-of -the century class war in the West comes alive, exposing the extremes resorted to by both sides. After this book, Idaho from 1890-1906 will take a place in U.S. labor history alongside Homestead, Matewan, Blair Mountain and Harlan County,Ky.
Rating:
Summary: A VIEW OF THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY
Review: AS WE APPROACH THE MILLENNIUM, THOSE OF US WHO HAVE A SENSE OF HISTORY ABOUT US, CANNOT HELP BUT TO WONDER AS TO THE CONDITIONS AND HUMANKIND OF OUR COUNTRY OF ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO. ALTHOUGH "BIG TROUBLE" ENTICES US WITH THE PROMISE OF A COURTROOM DRAMA STARRING NONE OTHER THAN CLARENCE DARROW, THIS PROMISE IS HOLLOW, AND THOSE WHO ARE EXPECTING A RIVAL TO "COMPUSION" OR "INHERIT THE WIND" WILL BE SORELY DISAPPOINTED. IN POINT OF FACT, THE COURTROOM DRAMA IS AN AFTERTHOUGHT, COMPRISING OF LESS THAN FIFTY PAGES OF THE EPIC. I SAY "EPIC", BECAUSE THIS IS WHAT "BIG TROULBE" IS IN REALITY. IT GIVES A VIEW OF THE POLITICAL, SOCIAL, LABOR, AND ALL AROUND AMERICAN CONDITION AS THE OLD CENTURY ENDS AND THE CORNERSTONES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY ARE LAID. HERE IS A VIEW OF THE PRESSING ISSUES OF THE DAY; FORESTRY PRESERVATION, LABOR UNREST AND A VIVID HISTORY OF THAT MOST MYTHICAL OF LAW ENFORCEMENT BUREAU, THE PINKERTONS. HERE IS THE EMERGENCE OF THE PERSONALITIES THAT WILL LOOM LARGE AS THE COUNTRY TURNS YET ANOTHER HUNDRED YEARS, TEDDY ROOSEVELT AND HIS TEDDY BEAR, ETHEL BARRYMORE, WALTER JOHNSON TO NAME BUT A FEW. THE BOOK IS A PATINA OF A COUNTRY READY TO TAKE ITS PLACE AS A WORLD POER AS THE CLOCK STRIKES 100. YET UNSCATHED BY WORLD WAR, THE FACES ARE BRIGHT AND THE EYES ARE CLEAR. THE BLOOD SPILT HERE IS OURS ALONE, AND MORE PARTICUALLY THAT OF AN OBSCURE EX-GOVERNOR, WHOSE DEATH GIVES RISE TO THE GLUE OF THE WORK. A STEP BACK IN TIME, YES, AND PAINSTAKINGLY BRILLIANT AT THAT. A COURTROOM DRAMA, I AM AFRAID NOT.
Rating:
Summary: Better than most yet, just shy of great.
Review: Before reading Big Trouble I had only a passing familirarity with Debs, Heywood, the IWW and the rather large socialist movement in this country. Lukas has piqued my interest and I will read more. I would like to know why so much information was in the book that stuck me as purely extraneous I.E the meandering paen to Ms. Barrymore. Without giving much away the last paragraph in the book's epilogue dealing with another fatal bombing should have been more thoroughly explored at the expense of Ms. Barrymore and any number of other digressive bit players. Still this was an excellent read.
Rating:
Summary: One of the year's outstanding works in American history
Review: Big Trouble is a meticulously researched and interesting work on America at the turn-of-the century. The murder of an Idaho governor and subsequent trial of three union leaders, including Big Bill Haywood, sparked national attention. The trial also symbolizes the progressive issues of the day. Within that context, the reader will enjoin several diverse personalities of that era, including politicians, famous trial lawyers, artists, journalists, actors, and athletes. Big Trouble is as much a trial of America during the Industrial Revolution, filled with social tension, class struggle and labor unrest, as it is a trial involving victims and villains of an Idaho landscape.
Rating:
Summary: A Book That Killed The Author, An American Herodotus
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant overview of America 100 years ago
Review: 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, 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
Rating:
Summary: Fact More Enthralling Than Fiction
Review: 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.
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