Mark Gelfand has long served as a professor of history at Boston College, focusing on issues of modern American urban development and policy. He is the author of A Nation of Cities: The Federal Government and Urban America, 1933–1965 and Trustee for a City: Ralph Lowell of Boston.
After earning his B.A. at the College of the City of New York, Gelfand earned an M.A. at Harvard University and a Ph. D. at Columbia University. He worked as an acting assistant professor of history at University of California, Berkeley, from 1972 to 1974. He is currently writing a biography of Judge Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr. (1906-1986), who sat in the Federal District Court in Boston from 1942 until his death.