Rating: 
Summary: what is the deal
Review: The book which is ostensibly about a murder and a murder trial obsessively wanders off in all directions. Any time a noun appears--IWW, Pinkerton, baseball, theatre, etc. the author spends 50-100 pages telling us about a new subject. we don't even get to the trial for nearly 500 pages and then the treatment is inadequate.Common Ground was an awe-inspiring work. I found this to be terribly disappointing.
Rating: 
Summary: History in all its messy, beautiful complexity
Review: The principal story of this thoroughly engrossing book is a sensationalist murder trial that took place in Idaho in 1905--but that's only the jumping off point. Lukas pulls in every thread of the tangled issues and events that led up to that trial, and so demonstrates the vast complexity of history. When black soldiers are brought in to guard rioting miners, you get a history of African Americans in the U.S. military. When rival detective agencies are vying for control of the case, you read a history of law enforcement. You meet Clarence Darrow (who represented the defendants), Ethel Barrymore and baseball great Walter Johnson, along with Americans unknown to most modern readers, but no less influential and prominent in their day, such as labor leader Bill Haywood and Pinkerton detective James McParland. The history of organized labor, American class consciousness, and the broken promise of the American West are all central to the story. Lukas's writing is precise, compelling and extremely readable. I thought I knew a thing or two about American history, until I read this book; every page brought a new revelation.
According to the author, if the United States ever teetered at the brink of class war, it was in the western states at the early part of this century. Those volatile times are a fascinating mirror through which to contemplate our own.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting But Lacks Focus
Review: The stated goal of this sprawling book is to explore class conflict in America. In a previous book, Lukas found class and racial distinctions to be so tightly interwined that teasing out the effects of class was difficult. Lukas turned to Progressive Era America, a period of naked class conflict, to explore this theme. To organize his book he uses the trial of several labor leaders for the murder of an ex-governor of Idaho, the first of several 'trials of the century', as the unifying narrative element. Unfortunately, this device is not employed successfully. The trial is described in great detail with many, many digressions along the way. While individually interesting, these digressions tend to overwhelm the main narrative and obscure the central themes of the book. I suspect that Lukas became interested in providing a panoramic view of Progressive Era America, at considerable cost to analysis of the ostensible central themes of the book. Lukas did a remarkable amount of research, and cites an array of primary sources. Unfortunately, he doesn't grapple explicitly with the issues of class and why individuals chose their particular sides in the class conflicts of the day. This book would have benefited from vigorous editing and much more analysis. Lukas clearly read but did not apparently assimilate the extensive secondary literature on the Progressive Era. This is a pity because much of this literature deals insightfully with the very questions that apparently prompted him to pursue this topic. This is an unusual situation where the audience would have been served better by less use of primary sources and greater reliance on existing scholarship.
Rating: 
Summary: A broad spectrum of American history, politics and humanity
Review: There is a great deal of American history which turns on the events portrayed in this book: labor, the mines and railroads, the power & beauty of print news, Irish immigration, manipulation of post civil war black military, law and its celebrities, the Pinkertons, and Idaho, complex, beautiful Idaho! It is a big book, and a lot to wade through. But doing so inoculates you with the human beings who made up this real life drama. Every prominent figure gets his or her own mini-biography (whether you want it or not); so the journey stays focused and travels around the country at the same time. Educational, enjoyable and hauntingly real.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad a little long
Review: This book is basically an examination of a trial by Clarence Darrow. In short what has happened is that Frank Steunenberg a former state governor has been killed by a bomb. The authorities had been able to track down the trigger-man quite quickly. What is in issue is the trial of three union leaders the most prominent being Bill Haywood. The allegation was that this was a pay back killing for the former governors support of mine owners who were involved in anti union activity and had been ordered by the unionists. The events occurred in Idaho which at the time was a very sparsely populated state. The state had problems investigating the matter and the mine owners paid for the Pinkerton detective agency to investigate the matter. The union hired Clarence Darrow to appear for the Defence. The book is a very long one some 800 pages and is full of epic stuff. The author goes off and writes long descriptions of characters far from the action to give the reader a feel of America at the time and the sorts of struggles that were going on between Labor and Capital. Some people who have read the book have found this a bit of a slog. I thought that it was reasonable if a little long winded. The meat of the book concerns the trial. However the trial was only one aspect of complex legal maneuvering. All the parties played the game toughly. The defendants were not legally arrested but kidnapped by private detectives. Witnesses were made offers by the prosecution and the Defence was responsible for the spiriting away of at least one witness. It was a case in which by the time of the trial most parties knew what was going to happen. The trigger-man would give evidence and his credibility would be attacked. The removal of other witnesses improved things remarkably for the Defence. This is broadly what happened and in the end a jury rejected the evidence. The book is an interesting portrait of how big capital can play the game tough and how this in turn can bread a culture of violence. An interesting read but not a on the edge of the seats nail gripping read.
Rating:
Summary: A brick of a book crammed with interesting information!
Review: This book is the literary equivalent of an unfocussed college history teacher: It sets out to explore the murder of Idaho Governor Frank Steuneberg in 1905 and the trial of his alleged killer, but soon the author is thrown off-track and the astounded reader finds him rambling on about aspects of turn-of-the-century American history as diverse as the role of Black regiments in the US army, President McKinley's private life, and Chicago's Pinkerton detective agency. But since this absent-minded professor of an author is both extremely knowledgeable and an entertaining presenter of his thoroughly researched tidbits and stories, this rambling makes an absolutely fascinating reading experience and is also bound to surprise and spellbind you. Its lack of focus ironically enough, turns out to be one of the books major strengths. I loved the book, it's a hard read but a rewarding one. Crammed with information you'll find nowhere else and actually shedding some new light on many of the topics it discusses, this is an absolutely fantastic history book.
Rating:
Summary: Ponderous - And worth every sidetrack
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Ponderous - And worth every sidetrack
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: A far too big "Trouble"
Review: This is a classic case of overkill. Had Lukas just stuck to the story at hand and recounted it in three hundred or so pages, he would have had a classic on his hands. Instead, he attempts to include every little detail and historic figure in the America of the last century's first decade. The story itself is quite powerful; a former governor assasinated by labor activists and the subsequent attempt to railroad union leaders. Too bad it drowns in a turbulent ocean of unnecessary detail.
Rating:
Summary: Insightful
Review: This is a wonderful book and an insightful lesson in American history. The book is perhaps overly long (it took me several months to complete) and could have been edited better, but the level of detail Lukas uncovers is staggering. Reading about the corrupt American political structure at the turn of the century is strikingly similar to the types of corruption we hear about today...the more things change, the more things remain the same. Excellent book, I just regret that we will have no more books from this author.
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