Pioneering Death

"A kaleidoscopic study of the whole societal context surrounding the Montgomery crime. It expands outward from standard criminology turf . . . to explore the grinding economic depression of the late 1800s and the complex financial and social pressures felt by Willamette Valley farm families."

* The Columbian *

"In his study, Boag successfully accomplishes two tasks: he assesses the environmental pressures that may have led Montgomery to slay his parents while offering a rare and intimate portrait of ordinary people in agrarian Oregon during the Gilded Age. . . . Boag's engaging prose, provocative ideas, and the inherent luridness of his subject matter make this work that rarest of things: an academic page-turner that should appeal to broad audiences of readers."

* Pacific Historical Review *

"Peter Boag's excellent Pioneering Death is, at its heart, an outstanding study of community in late nineteenth-century rural Oregon. . . . [The] book shows that there is still much to be learned about Oregon history and that community studies are a particularly powerful way of getting at that story."

* Oregon Historical Quarterly *

"Rigorous and compelling . . . Boag's insightful work does much to help us understand these shocking crimes and these unresolved stories that never seem to go away."

* Montana: The Magazine of Western History *

"Like the best microhistories, Boag's book uses the minutiae of [an 1895 triple murder] to open a window into broader currents—exploring violence, uncertainty, expectation, and despair in the rural Pacific Northwest of the time, and beyond. . . . [T]he vivid writing and careful detail in Boag's Pioneering Death make the book suitable for an audience beyond specialists."

* Pacific Northwest Quarterly (PNQ) *

"A compelling story that incorporates a diverse set of analytical methods to describe an eighteen year-old's parricide and murder in the 1895 Willamette Valley...Boag recounts this event, and the circumstances leading to it, with elegant prose and engaging detail."

* Reviews in American History *

"Meticulously researched. . . Boag's masterful achievement of reconstructing the world that became the stage for the youth's notorious acts is undeniable."

* The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth *

"Pioneering Death is a masterful project that reflects an historian at their peak. Boag's research is impeccable, and the narrative reads fluidly like a murder mystery accompanied by the voice of a thoughtful and supremely interested scholar. The work is both entertaining and unsettling."

* Nevada Historical Society Quarter