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.