Mark W. Summers

Mark Wahlgren Summers (born 1951) is an American historian who is a professor at the University of Kentucky.^[1] He has written books about political cartoons, the election of U.S. president Grover Cleveland in 1884,^[2] and the role of fear in American politics after the Civil War.^[3]

His father Clyde Summers was a law professor at Yale University.^[4]

He became fluent in French after spending part of his childhood in Wallonia.^{[citation needed]}

Writings

A Student Cartoonist's View of Great Figures in American History (1972)
The Presidency in Political Cartoons, 1776-1976 (1976)
Railroads, Reconstruction and the Gospel of Prosperity (1984)
The Plundering Generation: Corruption and the Crisis of the Union, 1848-1861 (1987)
The Era of Good Stealings (1992)
The Press Gang (1994)
The Gilded Age (1997)
Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion: The Making of a President, 1884 (2000)
Party Games: Getting, Keeping, and Using Power in Gilded Age Politics (2004)
A Dangerous Stir: Fear, Paranoia, and the Making of Reconstruction (2009)
The Ordeal of the Reunion: A New History of Reconstruction (2014)
To Save Us All from Slavery's Power: Republican Alarms, Southern Terrors, and the Plunge Into Civil War (2026)

"The Chimera of Whig Persistence: Louisiana and the Election of 1865" (1983)
"A Band of Brigands: The 'Gridiron' Legislature and the Nomination of Lincoln" (1984)
"The Press Gang" (1990)