Winner of the 2010 T.R. Fehrenbach Book Award

Cowboys are an American legend, but despite their ubiquity in history and popular culture, misperceptions abound. Jacqueline M. Moore casts aside romantic and one-dimensional images of cowboys by analyzing the class, gender, and labor histories of ranching in Texas during the second half of the nineteenth century.

As working-class men, cowboys showed their masculinity through their skills at work as well as public displays in town. But what cowboys thought was manly behavior did not always match those ideas of the...