Herbert S. Klein, Professor of History, specializes in Latin American history. He received his B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1957 and his Ph.D. from Chicago in 1963. For thirty five years he taught at Columbia University and was the Gouverneur Morris Professor of History.
He is the author of some 17 books and 145 articles in several languages on Latin America and on comparative themes in social and economic history. Among these books are four comparative studies of slavery, the most recent of which are African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (1986), The Atlantic Slave Trade (1999), and Slavery and the Economy of São Paulo, 1750-1850 (co-author) (2003), as well as four books on Bolivian history, the latest of which is Haciendas and Ayllus: Rural Society in the Bolivian Andes in the 18th and 19th Centuries (1993) and A Concise History of Bolivia (2003). He has also published on such diverse themes as The American Finances of the Spanish Empire, 1680-1809 (1998) and A Population History of the United States (2004).
His long-term interests are in comparative economic and social history, and he is currently working on 20th century social change in Latin America and the United States. Aside from courses on Latin America, he teaches methodology classes on quantitative methods in historical research and demographic history.
He has taught full terms as well at the Universities of Toronto, Buenos Aires, La República in Uruguay (two terms in different years), Universidad de San Andrés (Argentina). and Univerisdade de São Paulo (several terms); as well as the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales(Paris) (two terms in different years); Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Universidade Federal de Paraná, the Colegio de México and at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz, Bolivia.