Louis Hyman
Louis Roland Hyman (born 1977) is an American writer and economic historian. He is the Dorothy Ross Professor of Political Economy in History at Johns Hopkins University and teaches at the university’s SNF Agora Institute. He previously held the Maurice and Hinda Neufeld Founders Professor in Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University.
Hyman grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and attended McDonogh School. He earned a BA in history and mathematics from Columbia University, and was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Toronto studying Canadian history. He earned a PhD in American history from Harvard University in 2007.
His dissertation became the book Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink (Princeton University Press, 2011), which Choice named one of its Outstanding Academic Titles. His second book, Borrow: The American Way of Debt (2012), explores how American culture shapes debt.
Hyman has written for outlets including Enterprise & Society, Reviews in American History, CNBC, Wilson Quarterly, and the New York Times, and has worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Company. He taught at Harvard before joining Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and now teaches an EdX MOOC titled American Capitalism: A History.
He is married to novelist Katherine Howe. His mother, Patty Kuzbida, is a retired laboratory technician and outsider artist whose work is in the American Visionary Art Museum.
This page was last edited on 1 February 2026, at 23:31 (CET).