Louis Menand is a cultural historian, critic, and essayist whose work examines the intellectual and artistic life of the United States from the nineteenth century to the present. A longtime contributor to the New Yorker, he is known for his writing on literature, philosophy, education, and the history of ideas. His Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Metaphysical Club explores the rise of American pragmatism through the lives of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey, situating their ideas within the social and political currents of post–Civil War America.

His most recent book, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, received wide acclaim for its synthesis of midcentury cultural and political history. A former member of the Pulitzer Prize Board, Menand has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.