Books published by publisher Bigwig Books

The frankness with which Caroline Kirkland wrote about frontier life did not sit well with her neighbors in small Pinckney, Michigan, the town founded by her and her husband. For that and for financial reasons, they returned to New York City, where she continued to write and penned this lively and humorous account of life in the West in 1846.The world Caroline lived in was replete with land speculation, thieves, and adventures galore. But it wasn't all bad. She also writes with great sympathy and humor about frontier love.Before California was the West, what we today call the Mid-West was the West. And it was as full of trials and peril and the later plains crossings would prove to be. Caroline Kirkland captured that world with her wonderful stories of life as a pioneer woman.Every memoir of the American West provides us with another view of the movement that changed the country forever.For the first time, this long out-of-print volume is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE by clicking the cover above or download a sample.

MURDER IN THE LONELIEST PLACESA cult-like leader gets assassinated on Seattle's First Avenue in broad daylight. A man kills a former governor by blowing him up. Kitty Ging goes out for a buggy ride and never returns.If you love True Crime that you can't put down, you'll love this collection of fast-paced, quirky, but altogether true murders in rural America. Famed writer Stewart Holbrook brought his Mark Twain sensibilities to cases that escaped the view of big city criminologists.These stories of murder and mayhem from America's past will thrill you and Holbrook's inimitable style will amuse.For the first time, this long out-of-print volume is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE by clicking the cover above or download a sample.

One of the most remarkable books to come out of the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War was William F.G. Shank's book on the generals he observed up close and personal all during the war. As a correspondent for Harper's Magazine and the New York Herald, Shank followed through camp and battle, seeing the strengths but also the foibles and failings of some of our most prominent Union leaders. This book is his excerpt on Grant.Shank does not shy from including illuminating details that he was later told may have offended the subjects of his treatments. But he is admiring of the men he met and admirably creates portraits of Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Rousseau, Thomas, Hooker, and others that you will not read elsewhere. As he states in the preface: "Very few generals have appeared great to the war correspondents; and though very few of the latter can claim to be descendants of Diogenes, they can assert, with equal positiveness, that very few of the generals have been Alexanders, and that 'the very sun shines through them.'" Every memoir of the American Civil War provides us with another view of the catastrophe that changed the country forever.For the first time, this long out-of-print volume is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE by clicking the cover above or download a sample. "Whether extolling or condemning, [Shanks] is always interesting." New York Evening Post.

Broken-hearted 20-year-old Edward Washington McIlhany (Mac) decided a way to heal his disappointment in love was to strike out west to the fabled 1849 gold rush in California. Leaving family and friends behind, with no assurance he'd ever see them again, he paid $300.00 to join a company formed for prospecting.In his autobiography, written sixty years later, he tells of losing friends on the perilous trip across the plains, meeting Indians, gun fights, getting scurvy, and the wild frontier of a mining town.McIlhany's book is a valuable resource on the prices of goods and services at the time, as well as a rip-roaring true tale of a time before the West was settled. He even sailed on the ill-fated Central America the year before it sank with over 550 souls on board.For the first time ever, this long-out-of-print book is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE or download a sample.

--For the first time, this two-volume collection letters and journals are presented together in e-book format with a new introduction.Though most Americans know Samuel Finley Breese Morse only for the telegraphic code that bears his name and his participation in the development of world-changing technology, Morse had initially made his name as a painter. He studied painting in England during the War of 1812. The deeply religious Morse often incorporated spiritual themes in his paintings as well as statements on the political turmoil of his time.Two of his greatest works have these elements. The Death of Hercules is considered his masterpiece. That painting, as well as The Judgment of Jupiter contain Calvinist and anti-Federalist elements.But the second half of his life was consumed with the development and promotion of the telegraph. In his own words and those of his friends and relatives, we are able to see the man through his successes and disappointments throughout his long life.Be sure to LOOK INSIDE or download a sample.

Far from the typical view of Reconstruction in the American South, many well-meaning Yankees went to Dixie after the war to offer help. Mary Ames was one of them.The guns had barely silenced when in May of 1865, wealthy young Northerners, Mary Ames and Emily Bliss, volunteered with the Freedman's Bureau to teach newly emancipated blacks. This diary is the story of that journey. They had quite an adventure, living in abandoned plantation mansions and meeting the leaders of the Freedmen's Bureau, including General O.O. Howard.First published in 1906, this book is available for the first time as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers and smartphones.Be sure to LOOK INSIDE or download a sample.