American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend It was an explosion that reverberated across the country—and into the very heart of early-twentieth-century America. On the morning of October 1, 1910, the walls of the Los Angeles Times Building buckled as a thunderous detonation sent men, machinery, and mortar rocketing into the night air. When at last the wreckage had been sifted and the hospital triage units consulted, twenty-one people were declared dead and dozens more injured. But… Product details and pricing info |
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75 Customer Reviews Posted
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- Howard Blum's American Ligntning offers scant plot, but big historical anecdotes. Mr. Blum tries to tie together the activities from coast-to-coast of the movie industry, the newspaper industry and a private investigator, but it is just too much of a stretch. Although the book catches you up in the beginning, the bouncing back and forth creates a jumbled affect.
- 2008-11-20, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Everything Old is New Again
- If it weren't for books like American Lightning, I'd probably still be a prisoner of a Pavlovian loathing of history instilled by years of deathly-dull date-memorizing history classes. Fortunately, toward the end of high school, Gore Vidal [...] into his novel, Burr: A Novel. I've been hooked ever since.
American Lightning is not a novel, but narrative non-fiction. In a novel, the author is free to embroider at will, to create fictional characters and story-lines around the truth. In narrative non-fiction, there's far less leeway. There are no fictional characters, but the author can make logical assumptions about conversations and motives. Eric Larson's fabulous The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America is an example of narrative non-fiction that includes much conjecture -- and that's why I say it's fabulous. It's a five-star read.
American Lightning extrapolates far less and jumps around more in an effort to tie its three main characters - detective Billy Burns, filmmaker DW Griffith, and lawyer Clarence Darrow together. I'd might have given it only three stars because it reads more like non-fiction than entertainment, but the relevance of the story makes it something I'm very glad I read, nudging it toward a fifth star.
The book is about domestic terrorism between labor and capitalists and centers on the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times building and the search for and trial of the killers. The impact of Biograph's DW Griffith's movies parallel today's media impact on elections, and we learn that socialism is not new to America. Indeed, everything old is new again.
I'm simplifying things unmercifully, but if you want more insight into the state of affairs in America today, author Howard Blum gives an excellent view. Burns, Griffith and Darrow are fascinating and lively characters.
If Griffith and early movie-making fascinate you, check out the novel, The Biograph Girl by William J Mann. It's terrific.
As for the ever-fascinating Clarence Darrow, the character Billy Flynn in Chicago (Widescreen Edition) is, in part, based on him. You know, another charismatic Chicago lawyer with a gift for the language.
People who are purists concerning history will not enjoy this type of narrative, but for many of us, it's an entertaining way to pick up some facts and actually retain them. - 2008-11-20, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Great caste; great potential; okay plot
- American Lightning must be a really great book. After all, it starts with a horrendous crime, the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building and the filling of 20 of its employees. It has a stellar cast of larger than life historical characters; attorney Clarence Darrow, director D.W. Griffith, journalist Lincoln Steffens and former secret service agent and detective Bill Burns whose real-life exploits served as the model for Wild Wild West's Jim West. It even ties in the birth of the motion picture industry and the Machiavellian scheming and plots involved in the efforts to get water to the rapidly-growing city of Los Angeles.
Even so, I found it somewhat of a letdown. I really enjoyed Burns' description of how he tracked down, hoodwinked, and captured the suspects and how he meticulously went about putting his case together. Unfortunately, once they were behind bars the plot slowed considerably. I was really expecting Clarence Darrow to come in and pull some Perry Mason magic but that is far from what happened. The Clarence Darrow we see in American Lightning is a shambling shadow of the brilliant litigator that history has portrayed him as. D.W. Griffith's role in the story is tenuous at best but he still adds color to the narrative.
All in all it is a pretty good story. If it were fiction I would have expected a different ending from Blum but such is the curse of a historical writer. - 2008-11-18, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- A vivid and detailed account of an important case in American legal history
- Superlatives are cast with great ease. How many times have sportswriters told us we are watching the game of the season or perhaps the decade? How often are political events described as the most monumental of our generation? How many legal battles have been labeled the "crime of the century?" This is not to be critical of Howard Blum's AMERICAN LIGHTNING but instead to place the engaging historical narrative of the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building on October 1, 1910 and the ensuing trial of the alleged participants in a more appropriate context.
Los Angeles in 1910 was a far different community than the entertainment center of the world that it is today. Its population of 319,000 placed the city behind Baltimore, Milwaukee and Newark. The movie industry was in its infant stage. California was the hotbed of American socialism, and the union movement was struggling to gain a foothold in California life industry. The battle between union and management would be shattered by an explosion on the morning of October 1st that decimated the Times building and left 20 men dead. Perhaps because the attack was on the newspaper industry, the media treated the event as a crime of enormous magnitude.
AMERICAN LIGHTNING is far more than the story of the bombing and the subsequent trial of brothers J.J. and Jim McNamara. The investigation, arrest and trial of the McNamaras represented another battle in the war being waged in the early 20th century between business and labor. Similar battles across the land involved union leaders Eugene Debs and William Hayward.
Blum is not content to simply describe the events surrounding the bombing. He has expanded the narrative by examining the lives of three men, two who played a major role in the bombing and one who helped create the modern cinema industry. William J. Burns, recognized in 1910 as "the greatest detective of perhaps that or any era," and Attorney Clarence Darrow would be prominent actors in the case. Director D. W. Griffith would play no actual role here, but in 1913 he released From Dusk to Dawn, a film loosely based on the case. Griffith actually had assisted Burns in a prior investigation by arranging for the showing of a movie that encouraged a confession from a suspect Burns was investigating.
Burns investigated the crime by techniques that did not and could not rely on the scientific methods that exist today. He worked diligently gathering evidence across the nation. Looking back on his investigation through the lens of the modern criminal law framework of defendants' rights, many of Burns's methods would not be tolerated in contemporary courtrooms. But Burns and Otis Chandler, who employed him to find the perpetrators of the bombing, could not be bothered by legal niceties. This was a war between labor and owners, and in war anything goes.
Darrow, of course one of America's prominent attorneys, had already earned a reputation in representing labor defendants in criminal cases. In later years he would gain fame for his defense of John Scopes and Leopold and Loeb. Defending the McNamara brothers was not the finest hour of his legal career. His clients both went to prison, and charges of jury tampering ultimately put Darrow in the defendant's chair in a Los Angeles courtroom.
Throughout the story, Blum paints a vivid and detailed account of an important case in American legal history. What makes AMERICAN LIGHTNING a compelling work is the author's placing of the crime in its historical context. The bombing of the Los Angeles Times building and the resulting trial can only be understood in the panoply of events occurring across the nation in the early decades of the 20th century. By his portrayal, Blum has aided readers in better understanding the events of that era and their impact on America.
--- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman - 2008-11-18, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Enlightening, but might have been better in another form
- When I was growing up and attending California public schools, the accepted California historical narrative was something like: Spanish missions, gold rush, statehood, citrus, motion picture business, Okies, World War II, aerospace industry, Disneyland.
Indigenous people, water politics, oil extraction, labor unrest, corporate misconduct, and political corruption were left out of the story.
American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood, and the Crime of the Century fills in some of the blank spots in that history and can be interesting reading for for those of us curious about the turn-of-the-century decade when events transpired and enterprises were undertaken which shaped Southern California for the next 50 years.
I found the book somewhat enlightening and learned some things about the times (and The Times) and the principal figures I didn't know before.
I have to agree, however, with other reviewers who don't think the book works well as an historical narration. I think I might have enjoyed the experience of the book more if were either a straight-up history with explanation and analyses or as a full-on novel where the characters and events of "American Lightning" drive a plot involving fictional characters (Ragtime, for example). As a novel, it might have been easier to weave someone like D.W.Griffith into a main story where his connection is tenuous at best. - 2008-11-18, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
