Richard Brookhiser

Richard Brookhiser is an American journalist, biographer, and historian. He is a senior editor at the National Review and columnist for the New York Observer.

Brookhiser is most widely known for a series of biographies of America's founders, including Alexander Hamilton, Governor Morris, and George Washington. He has written books that deal either with the nation's founding or the principles of America's founders, including What Would the 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, and went to work full-time for National Review in 1977; by the time he was 23, he was a senior editor, the youngest in the magazine's history.

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.

Brookhiser both wrote and hosted the documentary films Rediscovering George Washington, and Rediscovering Alexander Hamilton. His book Alexander Hamilton, American led to the "Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America" exhibition at The New-York Historical Society (2004–2005), where he served as the historian curator.

He received an honorary doctorate degree in 2005 from Washington College, and in 2008, President George W. Bush awarded Brookhiser the National Humanities Medal in a White House ceremony.