John Lear (1959–) is a historian, author, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Puget Sound. Lear was born in 1959 in the American Midwest into a working-class family. He was a first-generation fellowship student at Harvard College where he earned a Bachelor of Arts. Lear went on to earn a Master of Arts and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, completing his Ph.D. in 1993. He taught at the University of Puget Sound from 1993 to 2023, ultimately becoming a Distinguished Professor of History and Latin American Studies. Lear’s research and teaching interests include Mexico, Cuba, post-independence Latin America, comparative labor and urban history, cultural politics, and gender and social movements. His published works include Chiles Free-Market Miracle: A Second Look (1995), Workers, Neighbors and Citizens: The Revolution in Mexico City (2001), and Picturing the Proletariat: Artists and Labor in Post-Revolutionary Mexico, 1908-1940 (2017).