Party Games

“With acerbic wit and an incomparable grasp of period detail, Summers paints a picture of U.S democracy’s late nineteenth-century style.” — American Historical Review

“A welcome addition to Gilded Age political historiography. . . . Challenges accepted historiography and provides a lively account of the professionals who dominated US politics at the end of the nineteenth-century.” — Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire

“Combining rigorous research, superb narrative capacities, and robust enthusiasm for his subject, seasoned historian and writer Mark Wahlgren Summers relates the complex and comprehensive details accounting for the survival and thriving of the two-party system in American politics. . . . Party Games: Getting, Keeping, and Using Power in the Gilded Age merits a 'yes' vote.” — Rhetoric & Public Affairs

“With impressive research . . . Summers effectively links [Gilded Age politics] into a coherent political universe, illuminated by interesting and often obscure vignettes. . . . An important and provocative book that commands attention and will reward reading.” — Journal of Southern History

“Summers has created an exemplary work that will shed additional light on the politics of the Gilded Age in American history.” — North Carolina Historical Review

“A vivid and nuanced study that is all the more effective for the discrete and tempered presentation of its arguments. . . . Those arguments are also written with wit and an engaging turn of phrase.” — Civil War Book Review

“Summers has written another amusing, informative, and provocative book.” — Journal of Illinois History

“In page-turning prose, Summers shows the ways in which the people who made politics their business developed methods to keep themselves in power, deflect dissident third-party movements, and accommodate demands enough to disarm those who asked for them. This is an exciting and significant book, certain to take its place as a key work to understanding Gilded Age politics.” — R. Hal Williams, Southern Methodist University