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 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.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent history and overview of a period
Review: 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!
Rating:
Summary: Ambitious and successful epic of American history
Review: I loved this book. Lukas takes an event like the murder of Frank Steunenberg and, like a good and imaginative cultural historian, uses it as a springboard into cunningly disguised racial, class, and gender analyses. I also liked the fact that he demythologized Big Bill Haywood and Clarence Darrow by portraying them as human beings and not artifacts of Soviet-style Socialist Realism. His marshaling of evidence to suggest Haywood's involvement in Steunenberg's murder was particularly impressive. That being said, though, it does not necessarily follow that Haywood's ends were anywhere near as despicable as his means (very much the opposite, in my opinion), and it is ridiculous to assert, as one reviewer did, that Haywood's beloved "rosy red glow" of "Leninist Russia...began that country's retreat from modern civilized political and economic practice." The Tsarist massacre of peaceful protesters in 1905 St. Petersburg and the pogroms against the Jews (the most notorious of which took place in Kishinev, Moldavia, in 1903, only two years before the Steunenberg murder) were no more "civilized" than similar actions taken by Nazi Germany in 1933-45 and Communist China at various times after 1949. Violence begets violence, a maxim amply borne out by BIG TROUBLE. One of the great things about this book is that it expands on incidents revealing the sinister side of American capitalism and the desperate odds Haywood and his more law-abiding compatriots were up against.
Rating:
Summary: Class warfare in 1900's Idaho.
Review: It's a blockbuster of a book and I had to buy a book-holder for reading it in bed. It comes in a big package - over 750 pages in my trade-paperback edition. And it's American History made fascinating. What a mini-series this would be. What a movie! Lukas did painstaking research, not only in the relevant areas but in minor side-events and personages...all the tidbits of curious information about major and minor players in this riveting event of history.
Then add suspense, ..........What more do you need? Do something nice for yourself. Read this wonderful story told with consummate skill and sensitivity.
Rating:
Summary: Class warfare in 1900's Idaho.
Review: It's a blockbuster of a book and I had to buy a book-holder for reading it in bed. It comes in a big package - over 750 pages in my trade-paperback edition. And it's American History made fascinating. What a mini-series this would be. What a movie! Lukas did painstaking research, not only in the relevant areas but in minor side-events and personages...all the tidbits of curious information about major and minor players in this riveting event of history.
Then add suspense, ..........What more do you need? Do something nice for yourself. Read this wonderful story told with consummate skill and sensitivity.
Rating:
Summary: An epic portrait of America on the brink of class warfare
Review: Lukas' detractors invariably point to his numerous and lengthy digressions. But in this massive but consistently satisfying book, the digressions are at least half the fun. As with his brilliant award winning treatment of the Boston busing crisis COMMON GROUND, Lukas gives us a portrait of an age and an American region, not simply a history. Yes, you will learn more than you ever knew you wanted to know about the Pinkerton's, Clarence Darrow, Idaho mining, and labor activism at the turn of the century, but it is all with a purpose. Lukas has woven a glorious tapestry of Americana, and given us a picture of an age that is rarely revisted, when the possibility of an armed uprising was not merely a phantom in the minds of the far-Right, but a very real and immediate possibility. But always, Lukas sounds a human note, bringing us the private stories of each protagonist in this epic (there's that word again) struggle (and of the lesser characters as well, admittedly). This is essential reading for anyone interested in 20th century American history and the rise of organized labor in this country. The facts of Lukas' tragic death make his immersion in his chosen subject even more poignant and compelling.
Rating: 
Summary: Big Trouble: A Book In Search of an Editor
Review: One begins reading "Big Trouble" with great anticipation - a fascinating but little known historical incident, an outstanding writer with a proven track record and a host of respectable reviews. It doesn't disappoint... at least at the start. It takes a little while before one realizes that the book is a lost opportunity. A book that is initially difficult to put down becomes hard to pick up. Athough I stuck with it, I found myself frustrated by the many diversions that distracted from the intriguing story of a notorious murder and a sensational trial. What went wrong? The fault lies with the book's editor. Was there an editor? If so, Where was he or she? The editor did Lukas a great disservice and allowed a potentially great book to meander and ultimately, fail. It's a shame, particularly when one considers that the author's disappointment in his work was one of the factors that led to his suicide. At the same time, one wonders if the inability of Lukas to stay focused was a sign of his depression and if the book's shortcomings reflected a cluttered, distracted state of mind. Sadly, we'll never know.
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