Stopping the Presses

Woodbury depicts her crusading muckraker of a father (1886-1935) as an idealist who rallied against corruption and too-chummy links between crooks and politicos in a one-man crusade that eventually cost him his life. (Gangsters shot him dead in front of his family in a Minneapolis alley.) Unfortunately, tangible drama and outrage don't arrive until the book's second half, though an exhaustive portrait of the Liggett family saga, along with a generous helping of descriptions of the Depression-era American press and unionist-socialist politics do help set the stage. The mainstream press appears to have respected Liggett, who published mainly in the Midwest American, a small weekly he began in 1933 with the blessing of Minnesota's then governor Floyd Olson, but, as Woodbury shows, kept its distance. Woodbury's research is top-notch and is well complemented by childhood remembrances, but some of the detail is extraneous and might have been pared away to make this feel less like a regionalist's account. Still, readers will find fascinating the trial of Kid Cann, Liggett's accused killer. Edith Liggett, the author's mother, proves a staunch, heroic figure, and readers can only shake their heads as the press fights too late for the life and reputation of one of its own. 20 b&w photos. (June)