Leigh Eric Schmidt is Edward Mallinckrodt University Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Previously, he was the Charles Warren Professor of the History of Religion in America at Harvard Divinity School. He is the author of Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality (2005), Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment (2000), Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays (1995), and Holy Fairs: Scottish Communions and American Revivals in the Early Modern Period (1989). His latest book is Heaven's Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr, and Madwoman (Basic Books, 2010).