J. Anthony Lukas

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  Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America
  

  by J. Anthony Lukas

  ISBN 0684846179 (0-684-84617-9)
  Softcover, Simon & Schuster

  
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  Book summary:

  In June 1997, just months before publication of his latest book, Big Trouble, Pulitzer-winning journalist J. Anthony Lukas killed himself. He was 64 and, according to many accounts, had finally surrendered to a lifelong despair over what he saw as his inability to meet his own exceedingly high literary standards.

  Yet in reading Big Trouble, a gripping account of murder and politics in turn-of-the-century Idaho, one can't help but think that Lukas was far too hard on himself. His last work is a well-told tale of the struggle between labor and capitalists in the West at a time when entire state legislatures were effectively owned by corporate interests and America teetered on the brink of open class warfare.

  The story begins with the 1905 assassination of Frank Steunenberg, an ex- governor of Idaho. His murder was rumored to be the work of vengeful labor bosses, and Pinkerton detective James McParland tracked Wobbly organizer Big Bill Haywood all the way to Colorado to bring him back to stand trial, where he and two other men were defended by a team of lawyers that included Clarence Darrow.

  During the writing of Common Ground, his account of Boston's painful process of school desegregation in the 1970s, Lukas became intrigued by what he called race's "twin issue": class. "The more I delved into Boston's crisis," he writes in the foreword to Big Trouble, "the more I found the conundrums of race and class inextricably intertwined." Class simply wasn't as overt an issue as race in contemporary society. What Lukas needed was a time and place where class and class struggle were open and visible. He found it in Idaho in 1905, a time of change and uncertainty, when any notion of a large American middle class was still a distant dream. In order to make this era comprehensible to modern readers, Lukas has gone great lengths in Big Trouble to re-create the entire social, political, and economic context of the murder trial. Here are the histories not simply of mining, railroads, and unions, but of detectives, "modern" journalism, baseball, land speculation, and frontier-town boosterism. In its capacity to translate historical facts into an engrossing, insightful read, Big Trouble stands as a final testament to Lukas's well-deserved reputation as a top reporter of America's growing pains. [via]

  More editions of Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America:

  • Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America: ISBN 0684808587 (0-684-80858-7)
    Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
  • Big Trouble: A Murder in a Small Western Town Sets Off a Struggle for the Soul of America: ISBN 0684846179 (0-684-84617-9)
    Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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  Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families
  

  by J. Anthony Lukas

  ISBN 0394746163 (0-394-74616-3)
  Softcover, Random House Inc

  
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  › Find signed collectible books: 'Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families'
  

  Book summary:

  The climax of this humane account of 10 years in Boston that began with news of Martin Luther King's assassination, is a watershed moment in the city's modern history--the 1974 racist riots that followed the court-ordered busing of kids to integrate the schools. To bring understanding to that moment, Lukas, a former New York Times journalist, focuses on two working-class families, headed by an Irish-American widow and an African-American mother, and on the middle-class family of a white liberal couple. Lukas goes beyond stereotypes, carefully grounding each perspective in its historical roots, whether in the antebellum South, or famine-era Ireland. In the background is the cast of public figures--including Judge Garrity, Mayor White, and Cardinal Cushing--with cameo roles in this disturbing history that won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. [via]

  More editions of Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families:

  • Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families: ISBN 0394411501 (0-394-41150-1)
    Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
  • Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families: ISBN 0394746163 (0-394-74616-3)
    Softcover, Random House Inc
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  Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years
  

  by J. Anthony Lukas , Joan Hoff

  ISBN 0821412876 (0-8214-1287-6)
  Softcover, Ohio Univ Pr

  
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  More editions of Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years:

  • Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years: ISBN 0140112294 (0-14-011229-4)
    Softcover, Penguin Books
  • Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years: ISBN 0670514152 (0-670-51415-2)
    Hardcover, Viking Press
  • Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years: ISBN 0821412876 (0-8214-1287-6)
    Softcover, Ohio Univ Pr