in quantitative public policy analysis-“basically, mathematical modeling and applied microeconomics,” he says-makes him particularly adept at synthesizing scientific research and common sense wisdom into erudite life advice. He may not have a degree in psychology, but his Ph.D. “There’s a seam running through that.” Brooks lives on that seam. “The self-improvement people can’t read the literature, and the academics can’t talk to the humans,” says Brooks. In his eyes, he’s uniquely positioned as a messenger between academia and the self-help space. Here was the guru of happiness, and we were his acolytes.īut Brooks, who began his Atlantic column in 2020 after 10 years as the president of the American Enterprise Institute, the neoconservative think tank known for its support of free-market economics, has quickly turned himself into a leading popularizer of happiness studies. Only the technology Brooks was selling was more abstract-a new way of pursuing joy. But when he strode onto a conference room’s makeshift stage earlier this morning wearing a wireless mic, the vibe was unmistakably Steve Jobs.
His column in The Atlantic, “How to Build a Life,” reaches over a million people in a good week.īrooks, 58, is bald and trim and looks a little like Stanley Tucci, for whom he is often mistaken in airports. He teaches a course at Harvard Business School called “Leadership and Happiness.” His book From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Meaning in the Second Half of Life became a New York Times bestseller. Brooks has spent the past twenty years training himself to overcome his less-than-sunny disposition and become a genuinely happy person, and now some 200 people have paid $700 to attend this conference, many flying across the country, because they believe he can help them do the same.īrooks’s credentials suggest that he can.
Arthur Brooks has a confession to make: “I’m not a very naturally happy person.” He tells me this one May morning in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay, thirty miles south of San Francisco, where he’s come to emcee The Atlantic’s two-day “In Pursuit of Happiness” festival.
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