Arthur C. Brooks

Arthur C. Brooks (born May 21, 1964) is an American author, public speaker, and academic. Since 2019, Brooks has served as the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Nonprofit and Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School and at the Harvard Business School as a Professor of Management Practice and Faculty Fellow. Previously, Brooks served as the 11th President of the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of thirteen books, including Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier with co-author Oprah Winfrey (2023), From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life (2022), Love Your Enemies (2019), The Conservative Heart (2015), and The Road to Freedom (2012). Since 2020, he has written the Atlantic’s How to Build a Life column on happiness.



Early life and education
Brooks was born on May 21, 1964, in Spokane, Washington, to David C. Brooks, a mathematics professor, and Jacqueline Brooks, an artist. When he was very young, his family moved to Seattle, where he spent his childhood.

Brooks studied at the California Institute of the Arts, but after being placed on academic probation in his first years and declining an offer to transfer to the Curtis Institute of Music, he left to be a professional French hornist into his early thirties, much of it with the City Orchestra of Barcelona, Spain.

Brooks returned to school in his late twenties to earn a bachelor’s degree in economics, via distance learning, from Thomas Edison State College, while continuing his work as a professional musician. He then earned master’s degree in economics from Florida Atlantic University while also working full time.

In 1998, Brooks earned his M.Phil. and Ph.D. in public policy analysis from the RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica, California, while working at the RAND Corporation as a military operations research analyst for Project Air Force.

Georgia State University & Syracuse University
Brooks began his academic career in 1998 at Georgia State University as an assistant professor of public administration and economics. From 2001 to 2008, he taught at Syracuse University, where he was made a full professor in 2006, and was named the Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government Policy in 2007. He held a joint appointment at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the Martin J. Whitman School of Management. During his tenure at Syracuse, Brooks published over 60 peer-reviewed articles and four books.

American Enterprise Institute
From 2009 to 2019, Brooks served as the 11th President and Beth and Ravenel Curry Scholar in Free Enterprise for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). In 2018, he announced his resignation from AEI, writing in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that "social enterprises generally thrive best when chief executives don't stay much longer than a decade, because it's important to refresh the organizational vision periodically and avoid becoming uniquely associated with one person."

Harvard University
Since 2019, Brooks has served as a professor at the Harvard Business School and at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he runs the Leadership & Happiness Laboratory at the Center for Public Leadership. His "Leadership and Happiness" class at Harvard Business School has gained immense popularity and attention in the press. He has also been a Senior Fellow with the nearby organization The Abigail Adams Institute.

Build the Life You Want
In September 2023, Brooks, along with co-author Oprah Winfrey, published Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier, which debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

From Strength to Strength
In February 2022, Brooks published From Strength to Strength: Finding Happiness, Success, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life. Brooks's ideas on happiness research on aging professionals were first introduced to the public in a 2019 Atlantic article, "Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think". From Strength to Strength debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, where it remained for several months. It received widespread attention, including from Oprah Winfrey, who recommended the book, and was endorsed by the Dalai Lama.

Happiness research
Brooks began focusing intensively on the study of happiness following his professional move from AEI to Harvard, where he taught classes in happiness, also writing weekly on the subject in The Atlantic. He also began hosting podcasts on happiness such as The Art of Happiness.

Love Your Enemies
In 2019, Brooks published Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt, which he describes as an antidote to the toxic political culture he found in the United States, especially after the 2016 election. With ideas based in behavioral research, ancient philosophy, and his own experience as the president of AEI, Brooks encourages a culture of love and respectful disagreement for political and economic progress and shows how this can be done. Love Your Enemies was a national bestseller and was included in Politico's "Top Books of 2019".

The Pursuit
Brooks was the subject of the 2019 documentary The Pursuit. This film follows Brooks around the world as he searches for answers to issues of global poverty.

Awards and recognition
Brooks has been awarded honorary doctorates from Providence College in 2024 the Catholic University of America in 2023, Saint Thomas Aquinas College in 2020, Brigham Young University in 2019, Claremont McKenna College in 2019, Hampden-Sydney College in 2018, Jacksonville University in 2018, Ave Maria University in 2015, Providence College in 2024 and Thomas Edison State College in 2013.

Personal life
Brooks is married to Ester Munt-Brooks, a native of Barcelona. They have three adult children, two daughters-in-law, and one grandson. They live in Massachusetts.

Filmography

 * The Pursuit (2019)