Richard Brookhiser

Richard Brookhiser (born 1955-02-23 in Rochester, New York)cite web |url=http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC?vrsn=149&OP=contains&locID=chan86036&srchtp=name&ca=1&c=1&AI=U13014936&NA=brookhiser&ste=12&tbst=prp&tab=1&docNum=H1000111697&bConts=43
title=Richard Brookhiser
accessdate=2008-07-06
date=2007-08-21
format=fee
work=Contemporary Authors Online
publisher=Thomson GaleReproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2008. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRCDocument Number: H1000111697] is an American journalist, biographer and historian. He is a senior editor at "National Review" and columnist for "The New York Observer". He is most widely known for a series of biographies of America's founders, including Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, and George Washington.

Brookhiser has written other books that deal either with the nation's founding, or the principles of America's founders, including "What Would Our Founders Do?", a book describing how the founding fathers would approach topical issues that generate controversy in modern-day America.

Brookhiser began writing for "National Review" in 1970. "My first article, on antiwar protests in my high school, was a cover story in "National Review" in 1970, when I was 15."cite news
first= |last= |authorlink= |author= |coauthors=
title=Richard Brookhiser
url=http://www.richardbrookhiser.com/about/
format= |work= |publisher= |location= |id= |pages= |page= |date=
accessdate=2008-07-06
language= |quote= |archiveurl= |archivedate= Biography page of Mr. Brookhiser's website.] He earned an A.B. degree (1977) at Yale, where he was active in the Yale Political Union as a member and sometime Chairman of the Party of the Right. In his freshman year he took a class on Thomas Jefferson taught by Garry Wills. Although admitted to Yale Law School, Brookhiser went to work full-time for "National Review" in 1977. For a short time he wrote speeches for Vice President George H.W. Bush. He wrote a highly critical assessment on the former president's son, George W. Bush in "National Review" in 1999 titled "Boy Bush: George W. Bush's Conduct of Life". [cite news |first=Richard
last=Brookhiser
authorlink= |author= |coauthors=
title=Boy Bush - George W. Bush's conduct of life - Brief Article
url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_8_51/ai_55746948
work=National Review
date=1999-09-13
accessdate=2008-07-06
quote=a fairly unpleasant 53-year-old teenager]

He has written for a variety of magazines and newspapers. Brookhiser's work has appeared in the "Talk of the Town" section of "The New Yorker" magazine as well as in "The New York Times", "The Wall Street Journal", "Cosmopolitan", "The Atlantic Monthly", "Time", and "Vanity Fair". In 1987 he began a column for "The New York Observer" and was still at it as of 2006.

Brookhiser both wrote and hosted the documentary film "Rediscovering George Washington", by Michael Pack, broadcast on PBS on July 4, 2002. He was historian curator of the exhibition "Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America", at The New-York Historical Society (2004-2005). He received an honorary doctorate degree in 2005 from Washington College. As of October 2003, he was reading Andrew Sullivan's blog "The Daily Dish" and Instapundit, and driving a '77 Camaro. [cite web
url=http://collectedmiscellany.com/2003/09/an-interview-wi-1.html
title=An Interview with Richard Brookhiser
accessdate=2008-07-06
accessmonthday= |accessdaymonth= |accessyear= |author=
last=Holtsberry
first=Kevin
date=2003-09-12]

His cancer and marijuana use

Brookhiser became ill with testicular cancer in 1992 and smoked marijuana in order to remove the nausea that chemotherapy gave him. (Before that, he smoked marijuana in college about 10 times, he said.)cite web
url=http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=4451
title= National Review Senior Editor Richard Brookhiser's Congressional Testimony (1996)
accessdate=2008-07-06
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publisher=National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
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quote=excerpted from testimony Mr. Brookhiser presented before the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime, on March 6, 1996 in support of the efficacy of medical marijuana]

"Because of the marijuana, my last two courses of chemotherapy were almost nausea-free", he said in 1996. "My cancer is gone now, I was lucky."

On March 6, 1996, he testified before a Congressional committee about using marijuana, urging the committee members to support decriminalization of marijuana for medical purposes.

"My support for medical marijuana is not a contradiction of my principles, but an extension of them", Brookhiser told the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime. "I am for law and order. But crime has to be fought intelligently and the law disgraces itself when it harasses the sick. I am for traditional virtues, but if carrying your beliefs to unjust ends is not moral, it is philistine."

Personal

He lives in Manhattan with his wife, Jeanne Safer, a psychotherapist and author, most recently, of "The Normal One". [ [http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjMzZTg1ZGUwNDE5MmU2OWEzN2ZhZTA1NjU4ZDUyOWY= An NRO Symposium on Pat Buckley on National Review Online Jeanne Safer, "Symposium: Pat Buckley, R.I.P."] Web page, April 17, 2007 at "National Review Online" Web site, accessed April 18, 2007] They also have a home in Ulster County in the Catskills. They married 1980-09-12.

Books

*"George Washington on Leadership," 269 pages (Basic Books: 2008) ISBN 978-0-465-00302-0
*"What Would the Founders Do?: Our Questions, Their Answers," 261 pages (Basic Books: 2006) ISBN 0-465-00819-4
*"Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who Wrote the Constitution," 272 pages (Free Press: 2003) ISBN 0-7432-2379-9
*"Rules of Civility: The 110 Precepts That Guided Our First President in War and Peace," 90 pages (University of Virginia Press: 2003) ISBN 0-8139-2218-6
*"America's First Dynasty : The Adamses, 1735--1918," 256 pages (Free Press: 2002) ISBN 0-684-86881-4
*"George Washington: A National Treasure," 104 pages (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution: 2002) ISBN 0-295-98236-5
*"Fighting the Good Fight: A History of the New York Conservative Party," 434 pages (St. Augustine's Press: 2002) ISBN 1-58731-251-4
*(Contributor) "Patriot Sage: George Washington and the American Political Tradition", editors Gary L. Gregg, Matthew Spalding, William J. Bennett, 355 pages (ISI Books: 1999) ISBN 1-882926-38-2
*"Alexander Hamilton, American," 240 pages (Free Press: 1999) ISBN 0-684-83919-9
*"Founding Father: Rediscovering George Washington," 240 pages (Free Press: 1996) ISBN 0-684-82291-1
*"Way of the Wasp: How It Made America, and How It Can Save It, So to Speak," 171 pages (Free Press: 1990) ISBN 0-02-904721-8
*"The Outside Story" (Doubleday reissue edition: 1986) ISBN 0-385-19679-2

Notes

External links

* [http://www.richardbrookhiser.com/ Richard Brookhiser's website]
* [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/gergen/brookhiser.html Richard Brookhiser On George Washington] Transcript of conversation with David Gergen.
* [http://www.nationalreview.com/brookhiser/brookhiser-archive.asp NRO Author Archive]
* [http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006905 Alexander the Great, Hamilton saved America from the Founding Fathers' economic ignorance.]
* [http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_3_urbanities-hamilton.html Hamilton, Our Founder]
* [http://www.bookpage.com/0606bp/richard_brookhiser.html Calling Thomas Jefferson: Applying the wisdom of the Founders to modern problems] BookPage interview
* [http://www.observer.com/20060807/20060807_Richard_Brookhiser_politics_richardbrookhiser.asp If It's Showtime!, Is It Giuliani Time?]
* [http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110003623 Lost in the Mists of Time: For students who don't even know when the Civil War was fought, help is on the way.]
* [http://www.observer.com/20060522/20060522_Richard_Brookhiser_opinions_brookhiser.asp Bush’s Immigrant Policy Sounds Like John Kerry’s]