Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America
by By Lukas, J. Anthony
Category: History , United States , 20th Century

From the author of Common Ground -- one of the most acclaimed books of recent years -- comes a grand narrative of the United States as it charged, full of hope and trepidation, into the twentieth century.J. Anthony Lukas, a masterful storyteller, tells a mesmerizing tale -- of a terrible murder, a great trial, and the struggle they set off for the soul of America.Big Trouble begins on a snowy evening at Christmas time 1905 in the little town of Caldwell, Idaho, to which the state's former governor, Frank Steunenberg, had returned to head his family bank while contemplating his political future. As he walked home that night, he sensed all about him the bold, exuberant, unashamedly acquisitive spirit of Caldwell's young entrepreneurs, who -- as his brother had written -- were "here for the money." Like so many in the West at that time, these brothers believed their prospects for enriching themselves were limitless, that the future opened wide before them.ANd yet the governor suffered premonitions that he and his neighbors weren't fully in control of their own destiny, that something malign threatened their well-being.Now, as he followed the plume of his frozen breath, his boots crunching eight inches of freshly frozen snow, he turned through his garden gate and a bomb attached to the gatepost blew him "into eternity."