Louis Menand (/ˈluːi məˈnɑːnd/;[1] born January 21, 1952) is an American critic, essayist, and professor who wrote the Pulitzer-winning book The Metaphysical Club (2001), an intellectual and cultural history of late 19th- and early 20th-century America.
A 1973 graduate of Pomona College,[4] Menand attended Harvard Law School for one year (1973–1974) before he left to earn Master of Arts (1975) and PhD (1980) degrees in English from Columbia University.
In 1988 he was appointed a Distinguished Professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and in 1990 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
His second book, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (2001), includes detailed biographical material on Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey, and documents their roles in the development of the philosophy of pragmatism.
Mark Grief's review in The Atlantic described the book as a "monumental new study of cold war culture," covering "art, literature, music, and thought from 1945 to 1965.