Although later made an icon of "rugged individualism," the American cowboy was a grossly exploited and underpaid seasonal worker, who waged a series of militant strikes in the generally isolated and neglected corners of the Old West. Mark Lause examines those neglected labour conflicts, couching them in the context of the bitter and violent "range wars" that broke out periodically across the region, and locating both among the political insurgencies endemic to the American West in the so-called Gilded Age.

Mark A. Lause is a professor of history at the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Cincinnati. Most of his work explores and documents the economic, social, and political possibilities that came clearly into focus roughly around the time of the American Civil War, often approaching the subject from neglected directions-the contemporary working-class movements, land reform, secret societies, and third-party efforts, as well as bohemianism and spiritualism.