In 1875 Robert Todd Lincoln caused his mother, Mary Todd Lincoln, to be committed to an insane asylum. Based on newly discovered manuscript materials, this book seeks to explain how and why.

Mark E. Neely, Jr., professor of history at Saint Louis University, is the author of The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia and the Pulitzer Prize winning The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties.

R. Gerald McMurtry headed the department of Lincolniana at Lincoln Memorial University and was editor of the Lincoln Herald from 1937 to 1956, when he became director of the Lincoln National Life Foundation (now the Louis A. Warren Lincoln Library and Museum).