David Brooks (commentator)

David Brooks (born August 11, 1961) is a Canadian-born American book author and political and cultural commentator. Though he describes himself as a "moderate Republican", others have characterised him as centrist, moderate conservative, or conservative, based on his record as contributor to the PBS NewsHour, and as opinion columnist for The New York Times. In addition to his shorter form writing, Brooks has authored seven non-fiction books since 2000, two appearing from Simon and Schuster, and five from Random House, the latter includingThe Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (2011), and The Road to Character (2015).

Beginning as a police reporter in Chicago and as an intern at William F. Buckley's National Review, Brooks rose to his positions at The New York Times, NPR, and PBS after a long series of other journalistic positions (film critic for The Washington Times, reporter and op-ed editor at The Wall Street Journal, senior editor at The Weekly Standard, and contributing editor at Newsweek and The Atlantic Monthly.

Brooks was born in Toronto, Ontario, where his father was working on a PhD at the University of Toronto. Along with his brother, Daniel, David spent his early years living in Stuyvesant Town housing, in New York City. Their father taught English literature at New York University, while their mother studied 19th-century British history at Columbia University. Brooks was raised Jewish, but rarely attended synagogue in adulthood. As a young child, he was enrolled in the Grace Church School, an independent Episcopal primary school in the East Village. When he was 12, his family moved to the well-to-do suburbs of Philadelphia's Main Line area, where he graduated from Radnor High School in 1979. In 1983, Brooks earned his Bachelor's Degree, with a history major, from the University of Chicago. His senior thesis was on popular science writer Robert Ardrey.

As an undergraduate, Brooks frequently contributed reviews and satirical pieces to campus publications. His senior year, he wrote a spoof of the lifestyle of wealthy conservative William F. Buckley Jr., who was scheduled to speak at the university: "In the afternoons he is in the habit of going into crowded rooms and making everybody else feel inferior. The evenings are reserved for extended bouts of name-dropping." To his piece, Brooks appended the note: "Some would say I'm envious of Mr. Buckley. But if truth be known, I just want a job and have a peculiar way of asking. So how about it, Billy? Can you spare a dime?" When Buckley arrived to give his talk, he asked whether Brooks was in the lecture audience and offered him a job.

Upon graduation, Brooks became a police reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago, a wire service owned jointly by the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun Times. He says that his experience on Chicago's crime beat had a conservatizing influence on him. In 1984, mindful of the offer he had received from Buckley, Brooks applied and was accepted as an intern at Buckley's National Review. According to Christopher Beam, the internship included an all-access pass to the affluent lifestyle that Brooks had previously mocked, including yachting expeditions, Bach concerts, dinners at Buckley's Park Avenue apartment and villa in Stamford, Connecticut, and a constant stream of writers, politicians, and celebrities.

Brooks was an outsider in more ways than his relative inexperience. National Review was a Catholic magazine, and Brooks is not Catholic. Sam Tanenhaus later reported in The New Republic that Buckley might have eventually named Brooks his successor if it hadn't been for his being Jewish. "If true, it would be upsetting," Brooks says.

After his internship with Buckley ended, Brooks spent some time at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University and wrote movie reviews for The Washington Times.^{[citation needed]}

In 1986, Brooks was hired by The Wall Street Journal, where he worked first as an editor of the book review section. He also filled in for five months as a movie critic. From 1990 to 1994, the newspaper posted Brooks as an op-ed columnist to Brussels, where he covered Russia (making numerous trips to Moscow); the Middle East; South Africa; and European affairs. On his return, Brooks joined the neo-conservative Weekly Standard when it was launched in 1994. Two years later, he edited an anthology, Backward and Upward: The New Conservative Writing.