Leor Halevi is a graduate of Princeton, Yale, and Harvard Universities and is currently an assistant professor of history at Texas A& M University. His work has won numerous distinctions, including fellowships from the Library of Congress and the American Council of Learned Societies as well as the Kerr Award for Best Dissertation in the Humanities from the Middle Eastern Studies Association. His publications have appeared in "Past & Present," "History of Religions," and the "Journal of the History of Ideas,"