Louis Roland Hyman (born 1977) is an American writer and economic historian. He is currently the Dorothy Ross Professor of Political Economy in History at Johns Hopkins University and a professor at Hopkins' SNF Agora Institute. Previously he was the Maurice and Hinda Neufeld Founders Professor in Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University's School of Industrial & Labor Relations.
After growing up in Baltimore, Maryland, where he attended McDonogh School, Hyman attended Columbia University in New York City. He graduated with a BA in history and mathematics.
Hyman was a 1999âÂÂ2000 Fulbright Fellow at the University of Toronto, during which time he studied Canadian history.
In 2007, Hyman earned a PhD in American history from Harvard University.
Hyman revised his doctoral dissertation into a book during a fellowship at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The result, titled Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink, was published by Princeton University Press in 2011. ' named it one of the top 25 "Outstanding Academic Titles" for 2011.
Hyman has served as a consultant for global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. His writings have appeared in such publications as Enterprise & Society, Reviews in American History, CNBC, Wilson Quarterly, and the New York Times.
His second book, Borrow: The American Way of Debt, which explained how American culture shaped finance and vice versa, was published in 2012.
After spending time as a lecturer at Harvard, Hyman now works at Cornell University's School of Industrial & Labor Relations. He continues to conduct research on the history of American capitalism. He also teaches an EdX massive open online course (MOOC) called American Capitalism: A History.
Hyman is married to the novelist Katherine Howe. His mother, Patty Kuzbida, is a retired laboratory technician and outsider artist whose works have been collected in the American Visionary Art Museum.