Born in Oklahoma, Mace did his undergraduate studies at the Oklahoma State University, graduating with a B.A. in history in 1973. He pursued his graduate studies at the University of Michigan, where he studied with Roman Szporluk, receiving a Ph.D degree in 1981, with a thesis on national communism in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s. Starting in July 1981, Mace worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute. Following the advice of Omeljan Pritsak, the director of the Institute, he started doing research for Robert Conquest's book on the Great Famine in Ukraine, "The Harvest of Sorrow".