OAH Distinguished Lecturer Profile

Louis Hyman is the Maurice and Hinda Neufeld Founders Professor in Industrial and Labor Relations in the labor relations, law, and history department at the ILR School of Cornell University, where he teaches courses on the history of labor, business, consumption, and management. His research focuses on the history of American capitalism, particularly the intersection of the government and the market in everyday economic practice. A former Fulbright scholar and McKinsey consultant, he is the author of Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink (2011), which focuses on the history of the political economy of debt, and Borrow: The American Way of Debt (2012), which explains how American culture shaped finance and in turn how finance shaped culture. In 2018, he published his most recent book, Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Wilson Quarterly, Bloomberg, CNBC, and other media outlets, as well as in essay collections. He teaches the EdX mooc, "American Capitalism: A History," and is the founding editor of the Columbia Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism book series.