William D "Big Bill" Haywood was one of the most colorful figures in American labor history. While working in an Idaho silver mine as a young man, he joined the Western Federation of Miners, and quickly became a member of its Executive Board and then its Secretary-Treasurer. Haywood preached a militant brand of unionism which advocated the overthrow of capitalism by a mass general strike and the use of sabotage. In 1905, a former Governor of Idaho was killed by a bomb; Haywood and two other WFM leaders were tried and acquitted of planning the murder. In 1905, Haywood was a founding member of the revolutionary labor union Industrial Workers of the World (IWW--the "Wobblies") and soon became its Secretary-Treasurer and best-known member. In 1917, 165 IWW members, including Haywood, were arrested and charged with violating the Sedition and Espionage Acts by opposing the First World War. Sentenced to 20 years in jail, Haywood skipped bail and fled the country in 1921.

This is William D. Haywood's own story, written during the last year of his life. A heroic giant of the American labor movement during its most turbulent years, "Big Bill" was a Socialist and a founder and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Born in Salt Lake City, he went into the Nevada metal mines at the age of 15 and joined the Western Federation of Miners in 1896 at 27. At 31, he was Secretary-Treasurer of the WFM and led its epic struggles against the mining trusts. He became the storm center of many other great labor struggles on the eve of the first World War, including the strikes of textile workers in Lawrence, Mass. and in Paterson, N.J. He also led the militant Wobbly "Free Speech" fights, and was prosecuted for opposing U.S. entry into World War I. His story, a swift moving narrative as absorbing as a novel, should be known to the present generation.

Hailed as "toweringly important" (Baltimore Sun), "a work of scrupulous and significant reportage" (E. L. Doctorow), and "an unforgettable historical drama" (Chicago Sun-Times), Big Trouble brings to life the astonishing case that ultimately engaged President Theodore Roosevelt, Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the politics and passions of an entire nation at century's turn. After Idaho's former governor is blown up by a bomb at his garden gate at Christmastime 1905, America's most celebrated detective, Pinkerton James McParland, takes over the investigation. His daringly executed plan to kidnap the radical union leader "Big Bill" Haywood from Colorado to stand trial in Idaho sets the stage for a memorable courtroom confrontation between the flamboyant prosecutor, progressive senator William Borah, and the young defender of the dispossessed, Clarence Darrow. Big Trouble captures the tumultuous first decade of the twentieth century, when capital and labor, particularly in the raw, acquisitive West, were pitted against each other in something close to class war. Lukas paints a vivid portrait of a time and place in which actress Ethel Barrymore, baseball phenom Walter Johnson, and editor William Allen White jostled with railroad magnate E. H. Harriman, socialist Eugene V. Debs, gunslinger Charlie Siringo, and Operative 21, the intrepid Pinkerton agent who infiltrated Darrow's defense team. This is a grand narrative of the United States as it charged, full of hope and trepidation, into the twentieth century.

An indelible portrait of a woman who through great toughness of character blazes her own trail Novelist William Haywod Henderson has won acclaim for his depictions of land and nature and his ability to bring the American West to vivid life. Of his most recent novel, The Rest of the Earth, Annie Proulx remarked that Henderson “writes some of the most evocative and transcendently beautiful prose in contemporary American literature.” Redolent with myth, humor, strange landscapes, and stark reality, Henderson’s new novel tells the story of Augusta Locke, a troubled yet spirited woman, as she raises her daughter in the deserts of Wyoming. Spanning the twentieth century, Augusta’s extraordinary challenges play out themes of love and loss, home and family, redemption and reconciliation.

William Haywood Henderson's first novel, Native, received lavish praise for its evocative prose and breathtaking descriptions of the stark Western landscape. Now, Henderson returns to the Wind River Valley in Wyoming to tell the story of one man's odyssey into this forbidding land.In the years following the Civil War, Walker Avary sails from Boston to San Francisco, then heads into the remote West, following the sketchy maps of the few who have gone before him. As he travels, he experiences several fleeting relationships before settling in a remote valley with a native young woman whose tribe was destroyed through its previous encounters with white men. Together through the deep winter, the texture of their lives is recounted in prose so sensuous that the sights, scents, even the wildlife and natural elements they encounter are made startling vivid.Both a precisely rendered depiction of time and place and a nearly mythic tale of survival in the wilderness, The Rest of the Earth examines the intersection of individual destiny, the legacy of personal history and the powerful forces of nature, which run like deep swift currents through this beautifully written work.-- "The Rest of the Earth" can be compared to the novels of Cormac McCarthy, Ivan Doig, and Wallace Stegner, with their western locales, lyrical writings, and brooding landscapes.

In 1905, representatives from dozens of radical labor groups came together in Chicago to form One Big Union—the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), known as the Wobblies. The union was a big presence in the labor movement, leading strikes, walkouts, and rallies across the nation. And everywhere its members went, they sang. Their songs were sung in mining camps and textile mills, hobo jungles and flop houses, and anywhere workers might be recruited to the Wobblies’ cause. The songs were published in a pocketsize tome called the Little Red Songbook, which was so successful that it’s been published continuously since 1909. In The Big Red Songbook, the editors have gathered songs from over three dozen editions, plus additional songs, rare artwork, personal recollections, discographies, and more into one big all-embracing book. IWW poets/composers strove to nurture revolutionary consciousness. Each piece, whether topical, hortatory, elegiac, or comic served to educate, agitate, and emancipate workers. A handful of Wobbly numbers have become classics, still sung by labor groups and folk singers. They include Joe Hill’s sardonic “The Preacher and the Slave” (sometimes known by its famous phrase “Pie in the Sky”) and Ralph Chaplin’s “Solidarity Forever.” Songs lost or found, sacred or irreverent, touted or neglected, serious or zany, singable or not, are here. The Wobblies and their friends have been singing for a century. May this comprehensive gathering simultaneously celebrate past battles and chart future goals. In addition to the 250+ songs, writings are included from Archie Green, Franklin Rosemont, David Roediger, Salvatore Salerno, Judy Branfman, Richard Brazier, James Connell, Carlos Cortez, Bill Friedland, Virginia Martin, Harry McClintock, Fred Thompson, Adam Machado, and many more.