Thomas A. Mason

Thomas A. Mason is an historian, educator, and author. As an adjunct lecturer at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis and at Butler University, he teaches courses on British history, American history, and Western civilization. He has written widely on politics, religion, public finance, and church-state relations in early modern England and early America, and on Lew Wallace and the American Civil War.

He is coauthor, with J. Kent Calder, of Writing Local History Today: A Guide to Researching, Publishing, and Marketing Your Book (American Association for State and Local History Book Series) (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013).

At the Indiana Historical Society (vice president, Indiana Historical Society Press, 2002–6; vice president, publications, 2001–2; director of publications, 1987–2001), he oversaw a publishing program of books (including the acquisition and publication of more than eighty titles), periodicals, documentary editions, and musical recordings. With J. Kent Calder, he launched Traces, the Indiana Historical Society's prize-winning popular history quarterly.

As project director, Mason led The Papers of Lew and Susan Wallace to completion. In 2018 the Indiana Historical Society Press, in cooperation with the Lilly Library at Indiana University at Bloomington, published on CONTENTdm, with publication supported by a grant from the Lilly Endowment, this comprehensive collected edition of 9,500 documents.

Mason served as editor of Documentary Editing, the Association for Documentary Editing's quarterly journal, 1989–93, for which he received the Association's Distinguished Service Award in 1993.

With The Papers of James Madison at the University of Virginia (acting editor, 1986–87; associate editor, 1979–86), Mason edited, with Robert A. Rutland et al., four volumes published by the University Press of Virginia. He taught at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, 1976–79.

As a lance corporal, Mason served with the First Guard Company (Detached), Marine Barracks, Morocco (Sidi Yahia du Rharb), 1967–68. He earned a B.A. with highest honors in history, Kenyon College (1966); M.A, University of Virginia (1970); and Ph.D., University of Virginia (1975). He served as president of the Indiana Association of Historians, 2008–9.