With oneeading intellectuals and commentators, his new book is the Second Mountains, how many people read this book yet . Okay . How many are going to read after this is over . Okay. How many people are going to get an autographed copy from david today. Okay so david thanks for doing this. So lets go before we go to this book Second Mountains which i have read, i would like to go a little bit about your background. You grew up in new york . I grew up in the lower side of new york and my parents were somewhat left wing, so the story i tell about my childhood is when i was five, and they took me to it a place where hippies would go to be. Im one of things they did is they would set a garbage can on fire and they with their their wallets in it to just show about how much they little they cared about money and material things. And i saw 5dollar bill in the garbage can and i reached in and grab for a breach in the fire, and grabbed the money and ran away that was my first step to the right. [laughter] and the other significant event in my childhood was at age eight, i read a book called paddington the bear, and decided that that moment i wanted to become a writer and ive been writing pretty much every day since. Its been the center of my life and in high school i wanted to date of a girl named bernice and she wanted to date another guy. And i was thinking what was she thinking i write way better than that of the guy. So what your parents do other than being hippies . They were 1950 progressives, but my father was teaching at nyu. He was a scholar of victorian literature and my mother was a scholar of victorian history. It was sort of a jewish tradition, the way you assimilated into americas become you became angle philip. It was active british. So what the jews did is they gave their kids super english names like norman, irving, sydney, thinking they were not jewish. But within five years their jewish name so it didnt work. s their last name his jewish name brooks . Brooks was changeable world war i because my original name sounded to german. Say did wellin resume . Wrong, i was a b student. I graduated in the lower class of my high school class. Had it. How did you get into this and it even worse if chicago . See megan those Days University of chicago admit 70 of applicants and went to chicago because Admissions Officers at columbia brown decided i should go there. You didnt get in what a joy to study. I really want to study political theory in chicago and research retrospective was the turning. For me because of the great culture. The best thing about chicago is its a Baptist School where professors teach jewish students. So i took the common core, i wrote 16 papers, i wrote 20 papers and then we had in those days professors that were refugees from germany and they, when they taught you these books, they taught you as if they were keys to the kingdom, that you were going to discover how to live if you studied these books well and read them seriously. Theres a saying if you burn with his enthusiasm, people will come from miles to watch it burn. And these professors have been enthusiasm, and so they really introduced us to the great world ecologies and they taught us to take reading really seriously. And then they taught us how to see, and seeing seems obvious, but if you live in washington and yearround politics, you know seeing the world, most of us see the world in a distorted way. And there is a quote from jon ruskins and he says the older i get, the more important, the more i think the most essential thing in life is to see something and say what you saw clearly in the short passage. Millions can talk in million can think and for those who can see. And there are just some authors like tolstoy that see the world clearly and i think thered tried to discipline us to do that. How did you do at the University Chicago . I did better there is a certain. Where you learn to work i learned to work. So how did you decide what you wanted to be that you know you wanted to be a writer when you graduated . I knew i want to be an author and i wanted to be a popular inside didnt want to think about abstract thinking. He didnt want to go into Investment Banking customer. That is a higher calling but i wouldve had to been able to do edition of malta location is understand. So when you were an undergraduate you met William S Buckley how did that change your life . I was a school columnist for the school paper and buckley came to campus and i wrote a vicious parody of him for being a name dropping blowhard. It was, what was called the National Buckley what was the buckley review which merged to form the buckley buckley, and it was a bunch of jokes about that. And he came to campus and he gave a speech to the student body and at the end of it he said david brooks if you are in the audience i want to give you a job. And that was the big break of by life. To give you job . Sadly he said i wanted to give a job but sadly it was not in the audience. [laughter] so i was literally out. I was hired by pbs to debate freedman on national tv. And if you go on youtube and youd type out david brooks milton freedman, youll see 21yearold me with the four oh, and these gigantic 1980s glasses that were on up currently on loan from the observatory. And basically the show is i was a socialist, i argue a. To that i regurgitated from a textbook, he destroys it and about six words, and then the camera lingers on my face as i try to think of something to say. So what did you do when you graduated . I worked as a bartender for years the best job i ever had. And then i covered chicago politics are something called the City News Bureau at chicago journal. That was Harold Washington ten he was in the council wars. Did you get a job at buckley eventually . I covered poverty on the south and west side and i thought i was seeing a lot of bad social policies ahead of the unintended consequences of making poverty worse. And that may be a little more conservative and i called buckley up and said is the job still there and he said yes and i moved to near. C moved to new york and work for the National Review . Yes, total shock you forget how buckley was. He lives a lifestyle is unimaginable. Your kid covering crime in chicago and suddenly year on park avenue and they put a finger bowl in front of you and you say wise the soup so watery. [laughter] had to been a conservative . Or how. I remember that time i remove being happy when thatcher won. But most in chicago they sent me a book called the reflections of the revolution in france by burke. At the time i hated it, i loathe that book. Here was a guy i wanted to look at revolution i wanted to create new ideas myself and heres a guy that said just trust your reason. Burkes conservatism is based on histological modesty the world is really complicated place, be careful how you think you can change it. Do it gradually, incrementally, and as brooks says as if you were operating on your own father. And so what i saw in chicago is social change done badly and it seemed to confirm and me what burke was saying. And i wasnt a conservative as a National Review was, but i was suddenly not. Sometimes when you get close to people you idolize, you see their faults. Did you see any faults in buckley or did you still idolize him . I have admin admiration for him. We were talking back stage that his son Chris Buckley wrote a book and it showed some of the dark side of his father. It was there. Hate he had adds father couldnt sit still and christopher graduated from yale at the commencement and he left. Christopher had to have lunch chapters on commencement alone. And that side of buckley i saw. He couldnt slow down, he simply could not slow down. On the other hand, he asked me questions about everything it took me to it yachting concert to the surrogate father for 18 months i what i saw was his awesome capacity for friendship. One of his biographers estimated that he wrote more letters than anybody else the 2h century, any other americans because he was counsel he sang in touch with his friends and were endeared to his friends. In the great thing was the conversations at his home, were almost never about politics, they were about ideas and literature he was not primarily a political. How long would you state the nash review . I did that for 18 months. Is that it 18 months that was short. It seemed longer the time. What to do next . I came down here and i began 12 since as a movie critic. One for the washington time and then one for the washington journal. To jimmy background and being a move critic . Since my socialite for so good in college i went to the moving every night. Laughter id seen a lot of movies and i say being a movie critic was fun in those days i got to meet Katherine Hepburn and many other people and had the best interview my life with Jackie Gleason. I was sitting in a hotel in florida and his wife walked in and plays the tonight show music and then Jackie Gleason walks in and goes like this. [laughter] and its just me and him in a room. [laughter] he just tells me one hilarious story after another. The one our members hes out drinking with joe dimaggio at two shores this barn new york. Any bets dimaggio thousand bucks that he can race him around the block and beat them. For those who are younger than 40, dimaggio was a professional athlete and Jackie Gleason weighed approximately 2000 pounds. [laughter] so they take off and they run around, and is dimaggios turning the corner, he sees gleason huffing and puffing up to the front door. He cant believe gleason beat them. Hes is okay double or nothing of any beach or twice. They take off they run around, they turn and once again leesons huffing and puffing up to the front door. So he goes into thousand bucks. And about half an hour later theyre back in the bar dimaggio says haley risser of the block but we never crossed on the bottom side. And so gleason had hired a car to drive around the block. [laughter] alright so your movie criticisms were well received or not . I think well enough, i will say that being a movie critic ruined my love for the movies. You have a notebook between yourself and the screen, and you can get lost in the movie anymore. And then when you meet the people making the movie, you realize how many Financial Decisions are going into each scene, and all you see is the money that produced it. So what do you do next . By then i was at the wall street journal and i became a foreign correspondent. So the salmon the early 90s to cover, this is the part of the world are to cover, from iceland to vladek ascot ship from scotland to cape town. In those days i covered nothing but good things. I covered the fall of the union, i covered the independence of ukraine, the berlin reunification, the german reunification, medela coming out of prison in south africa the piece trusted middle east, it was all good news them. To jaybird greenland or no . No but i put in a bid for. [laughter] s okay so you did that for a while, your Foreign Policy expert, then would you did you do next . I should say i had the best interview my life in russia. If you recall there was a coup against the regime and he stood up on a tank in front of the White RussianParliament Building and i ran into a 90yearold woman handing out sandwiches at the democracy protesters. She had grown up in the czars household, her first husband had been killed in the civil war after the revolution. Her second number and boys were killed in the battle of stalingrad. Her third husband was sent away to boo log and disappeared. She was a Common People in the 50s and was sent away with her people. By khrushchev. And then she ended her life handing out sandwiches in front of the Russian Parliament building. She had personally experienced every single event of soviet history, and it was one of those burning moments that you see history right in front of you. So what happened next . So i came home and i saw that American Culture had changed. I grew up i went to ojai school a place in pennsylvania and when i left it was a waspy town where people were green pants and deck ties. And when i came back i had the first anthropology, the store anthropology i never thought a story named after academic discipline would come to pennsylvania. So new culture in coming to and it became the first book. One is you write that . That came out in 2000. The theme was . There was peoples with 60s values in 90s money. So basically i came home and i looked at the New York Times wedding page, what they called the mergers and acquisitions page,. [laughter] it was like stand for mailing yale, goldman moehring mckenzie, they, you couldnt have too much of that because they are the tensions of b2 great in that marriage. And i saw that come to being and they will had to prove they did were not money hungry so that a code of consumption to prove that they were still progressives, and so for example one of the code was you can spend money, as much money you want is a room used by the servants. So this kitchens you could serve spend a lot of money in kitchens, so you had these nuclear reactors, these stoves, these nubby fabrics you had a cold code that i basically made fun of. So when did you begin writing for the near times . I went to work at the Weekly Standard where our job was to make the Republican Party moderate and reasonable and. [laughter] how many years reading that . I was there for nine years. I really began to figure out what actually thought, and then around 2003 i got a call from gail collins. They were editing the editorial page, and i sort of knew she was going to ask me to it write a column. So i took the train up and on the way up i said no, no, no. My best length is 3000 to 5000 words. 850 words or not my best length. And she and arthur asked the question and before is an essay now is anybody ever said no to the question do you want to become a New York Times columnist . And they said no no one is ever said no to this. And i had a failure of courage and i said yes. [laughter] alright what year is that you began . Right 2003 had you been writing how long . 16 years twice a week. How many columns right away . I write to week that the hundred year end its a lot. My chief joke about being a conservative columnist at the time was its like being the chief rabbi at mecca. Not a lot of company there. So how long does take you to write a column . It can be two and half hours and it can be 20 hours. The length of time i spend working on it has an inverse correlation on how good the column is. You ever get Writers Block and just call him up and say i just dont have anything today . No, that is not allowed. [laughter] thats not the way it works. Suppose you write something that they turn 20 words you need 30 more wordy get the extra 30 do you always have to fill up exact 850 . I throw in something about character you know. [laughter] so were you surprised that the readership that you produced with those columns. How many people not read them and i assume your pretty wellknown as a result of those columns . I dont know. I will say that joe columnist tell about their job, its like being married to a nympho maniac its good for the first two weeks, but you have to keep producing. [laughter] but i actually, the First Six Months on the job where the heart is professional. Did you ever actually spend time with the other columnist or people at the near times are you just writing it home and sending them in . We are always on the road, so im here in the d. C. Bureau and the two or three other columnists here we are just on the road so much i got my like them all, we get along, we just dont see. You ever have trouble coming up with an idea for a column or do i supply those . I have desperate trouble. So i used to think like its just sheer desperation, i used to think if i got hit by a bus and i lived i could get a column out of that. [laughter] my only desires now is for column ideas. Ive them or fantasize about winning the lottery, its wasnt the money it was like i could get a column out of that. Its a thing uppermost in my mind. Went to the pbs series Start Companies are. And his are starting to that one. So how frequently do not . So that is every friday and with mark shields runs on all in odd speed. [laughter] s every friday at bishop of washington or whatever you cant menu else . Right it does pin me down mix a have to be here every friday. If it was the shields and brooks to want to call Brooke Shields but they didnt go for that. [laughter] one of my great observations about the news hour something i am intensely proud to be a part of, we have a certain demographic who is our core demographic which is seasoned youth. And so up in 98yearold lady comes up to me in the airport, i know shes going to say i dont want your show but my mother loves it. [laughter] we do really both older folks. So youre supposed to be the conservative on that as that of fair characterization . Im supposed to be but frankly over the years, ive its been a struggle to, some conservative i think now i call myself a moderate. But the way the political world have shifted, its more accurate to say i am a moderate and someone is politically. Now they are wellknown for your tv show and also the columns. Your High School Friends call you up and say i really knew juergen to be successful . Are people calling of the didnt call you before . I dated a lot of peoples sisters, and all cases these are women who wouldve had nothing to do with me. I would say no, my core childhood experiences i went to summer camp or 15 years. And so that was my childhood. And i have relatively few friends from high school but i have about 60 friends from this camp. And they treat me the same as they always did. Is a jewish day camp somewhere . Well is call the church of the reincarnations is unlikely to be a jewish camp. [laughter] s okay lets talk about your second book. What was her