William Briggs Books

Badass Lawman . The true story of Sheriff John H. Adams who faced down the gangs and guns of early California and ended the career of America's most wanted bandit. Set against the sweep of America's Manifest Destiny, Badass Lawman takes the reader from the dust of the Santa Fe Trail and the dangers of crossing the prairie, across the mountains and deserts of our country to the lawless camps of the Gold Rush and the fertile valleys of the new state of California, where Californios were trying to hang on to their heritage and outlaws found justice was often served from a six gun or rope. Author William Briggs is a former San Jose State University mass communications professor and Dean Emeritus at California State University Fullerton. He is past co-president of the Morgan Hill, California Historical Society.

That Pirate, Bouchard: the epic true story of Hipolito Bouchard who became the hero of three South American nations, while considered the scourge of Alta California. The young French sailor, disillusioned after the Napoleonic wars, casts his lot with the emerging republic of Argentina in its fight for independence from Spain. His epic voyage aboard la Argentina takes him around the world and across the Pacific, blockading the port of Manila, negotiating with the King of Hawai'i, and meeting the Russians in northern California, all before loosening the grip of the Spanish Empire on the mission towns of Monterey, Santa Barbara and San Juan Capistrano forever, when for one brief week, the flag of Argentina flew over California. Returning to South America only to face charges of piracy, he fights for redemption before ascending to become the Father of the Peruvian navy. High adventure on the high seas, set against the turmoil of revolutions that shaped the modern world, That Pirate, Bouchard recounts the struggles of one man against an empire, and against himself, to become one of the last great privateers of the Age of Sail.