Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America Hardcover – October 14, 1997 by J. Anthony Lukas 
 
Recounts the trial of a radical union leader for the murder of Idaho's former state governor, a case that ultimately involved President Theodore Roosevelt and the tumultuous relationship between capital, labor, and the law in the 1900s. 100,000 first printing. Tour.
 
From Library Journal
Multiple Pulitzer Prize winner Lukas (Common Ground, LJ 1/86), who recently committed suicide at age 64, aspires in his final book to use the 1905 assassination of Frank Steunenberg, governor of Idaho, as a platform from which to survey the panorama of the turn-of-the-century's incessant labor strife. The murder, investigation, and trial quickly became a cause for business, labor, and law enforcement, both private and public. Lukas attempts to gather every thread of the events and actors' movements in the era's passionate, troubled labor history; he follows every digression and subplot and gives each character a minibiography. Given the fascinations of the subject and Lukas's skills as a wordsmith, individual segments of the book are most compelling indeed. As a whole, though, the maze of convolutions will discourage less-determined (and less-leisured) readers. The book nevertheless merits a place in academic collections.-?Fritz Buckallew, Univ. of Central Oklahoma Lib., EdmondCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
5.18