Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Review: American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood & the Crime of the Century
American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, the Birth of Hollywood & the Crime of the Century by Howard Blum
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A complicated and encompassing overview of ~1910 when Clarence Darrow returned to the courtroom with a defence of "justifiable dynamiting" for bomb-planting unions past frustration in their war with plutocrat industrialists. The work of "American Sherlock Holmes" PI Billy Burns to suss out the miscreants and invent bugging devices along the way. That part would make a great movie. As a side plot, D. W. Griffith invents feature films and then goes awry from the long trial and goes all "Birth of a Nation". Why was the trial such a stunner? Somthing about the need to re-align politicals and skew political opinion due to something to do with people locking up land to own the waterway to a thirsty Los Angeles, ala "Chinatown".
Well, I enjoyed it even if I don't understand all of it.
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