David Brooks

David Brooks (born August 11, 1961) is an American conservative political and cultural commentator who writes for The New York Times. He has worked as a film critic for The Washington Times, a reporter and later op-ed editor for The Wall Street Journal, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard from its inception, a contributing editor at Newsweek, and The Atlantic Monthly, in addition to working as a commentator on NPR and the PBS NewsHour. Early life and education Brooks was born in Toronto, Ontario, where his father was working on a PhD at the University of Toronto. He spent his early years in the Stuyvesant Town housing development in New York City with his brother, Daniel. His father taught English literature at New York University, while his mother studied nineteenth-century British history at Columbia University. Brooks was raised Jewish but rarely attended synagogue in his later adult life. As a young child, Brooks attended the Grace Church School, an independent Episcopal primary school in the East Village. When he was 12, his family moved to the Philadelphia Main Line, the affluent suburbs of Philadelphia. He graduated from Radnor High School in 1979. In 1983, Brooks graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in history. 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. Early career 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.