Research Paper on:
Big Trouble A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America by J. Anthony Lukas

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subsequent trial of former Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg. Steunenberg has the ominous distinction of being the first person in America to be murdered by a bomb on December 30,  1905, but it is not the murder that takes center stage in Lukass voluminous, nearly 900-page book, Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets off a Struggle  for the Soul of America (Wypijewski 25). Rather, it is the capture, interrogation and conviction of a man known only by an alias of Harry Orchard as Steunenbergs contracted  killer, the extradition and trial of the men Orchard named as the trio who ordered the "hit," key Western Federation of Miners (WFM) officials "Big Bill" Haywood, Charles Moyer and  George Pettibone, that take center stage. The text is a massive and painstakingly researched tale of greed, corruption and the inequities of the capitalist class struggle. In other  words, it is not only an historical tale about American life during the early twentieth century, it is a story about America itself. The book is subdivided into fourteen chapters,  an Epilogue, plus detailed Notes and Bibliography sections, and begins with the final day of former Governor Steunenbergs life. It then pans out over the expansive Western landscape, geographical,  social and political. Lukas makes it clear that during this time period, the world inhabited by Frank Steunenberg and his contemporaries was a place where frontier justice reigned supreme,  where disputes are settled either by bribes or violence. Also looming large over the Western horizon is labor, with clear-cut distinctions made between union bosses and union workers.  It is this class struggle demarcated by lines of rich and poor, black and white, master and slave, that Lukas emphasizes throughout Big Trouble. He illustrates how Steunenberg courted