In this lively account of Arizona's Rim Country War of the 1880s--what others have called "The Pleasant Valley War"--historian Daniel Justin Herman explores a web of conflict involving Mormons, Texas cowboys, New Mexican sheepherders, Jewish merchants, and mixed-blood ranchers. Their story, contends Herman, offers a fresh perspective on Western violence, Western identity, and American cultural history.

At the heart of Arizona's range war, argues Herman, was a conflict between cowboys' code of honor and Mormons' code of conscience. He investigates the sources of these attitudes,...