Author, commentator, and New York Times Op-Ed columnist David Brooks, a frequent analyst on NPR's All Things Considered and the Diane Rehm Show, will visit the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum on Wednesday, Feb. 27 to discuss "Politics, Culture, and the Way We Live Now." The public portion of the program begins at 6:45 p.m., with free seating on a first-come basis.
Brooks, whose articles have touched on a wide range of socioeconomic issues, pop culture, and political debates, is a frequent commentator on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer. His column has appeared in the Times since September 2003. Preceding his work with the Times, Brooks was senior editor of The Weekly Standard, and spent nine years with The Wall Street Journal first as editor of its book review section and lastly as its op-ed editor. He has also been a contributing editor at Newsweek and the Atlantic Monthly.
Originally a self-described liberal who wrote a parody biopic on William F. Buckley, Brooks' thinking is said to have undergone a gradual transformation in the 1980s, due in part to his contact and debate with the Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman in 1983. His more recent opinion pieces have run the gamut from the Iraq War, to gay marriage, to the culture wars in America between the Left and Right, establishing him as a prominent, distinctive conservative voice on political and social issues.
His recent books, Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (and Always Have) in the Future Tense (2004) and Bobos in Paradise: the New Upper Class and How They Got There (2000) offer incisive social commentary on the peculiarities and patterns evident in modern American culture.
"Perceptive and amusing," The Washington Post's Jonathan Yardley wrote of Bobos in Paradise. "[Brooks] has identified the salient characteristics of this new elite, and he describes them with accuracy and wit."
Brooks got his start in writing immediately after college. After earning his degree in history from the University of Chicago, he worked as a police reporter for the City New Bureau, a wire service owned jointly by the Chicago Tribune and Sun Times.
His articles have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Forbes, and the Washington Post. He is the editor of the anthology, Backward and Upward: The New Conservative Writing (Vintage Books).
His visit is sponsored jointly by the Athenaeum and the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World at CMC.