This compelling volume by Marilynn Johnson explores the question of how violent the West truly was and what conditions made violence likely to occur. With a solid introduction and intriguing collection of documents, Marilynn Robinson makes an important contribution to the history of the West.The primary sources, including newspaper reports, industrialists' accounts, union documents, and personal memoirs, offer a vivid portrait of the tensions surrounding land use, industrial development, labour, and race and ethnicity that fuelled violence and ultimately contributed to western development.Document headnotes, two chronologies, questions for consideration, a selected bibliography, and an index enrich student exploration of this often-misunderstood part of American history. Popular portrayals have long depicted the American frontier of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a 'Wild West' marked by violence. This compelling volume by Marilynn Johnson explores the question of how violent the West truly was and what conditions made violence likely to occur.