Christine Leigh Heyrman is the Robert W. and Shirley P. Grimble Professor of American History at the University of Delaware. Her books include: Commerce and Culture: The Maritime Communities of Colonial Massachusetts, 1690-1750 (1984); Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (1998), which won the Bancroft Prize; and American Apostles: When Evangelicals Entered the World of Islam (2015), which won the Parkman Prize She is also a coauthor of the textbook, Nation of Nations: A Narrative History of the American Republic (8th edition, 2013).