Jeffrey Abt is associate professor in the James Pearson Duffy Department of Art and Art History at Wayne State University. He is the author of A Museum on the Verge: A Socioeconomic History of the Detroit Institute of Arts, 1882-2000.
""American Egyptologist is the fascinating story of a man and the formation of an institution whose roots lie in the tense politics of the Middle East but whose mission is to keep alive the histories of the ancient Near East."" (Times Higher Education) ""Jeffrey Abt's biography is almost encyclopedic, but the narrative is always visible amid the detail, and footnotes and references are used wisely. It is unlikely that the story of this restless scholar will need to be written again."" (Wall Street Journal) ""Jeffrey Abt's absorbing and sumptuously illustrated book places Breasted's life in the broader contexts of a codifying educational system, philanthropy in the Gilded Age, and the growing chasm between faith and reason."" (New Yorker)""