Brooks Adams

Born in Quincy, Massachusetts, Brooks Adams was an American historian, political writer, and public intellectual from the prominent Adams family. He was the grandson of President John Quincy Adams and the brother of historian Henry Adams, and he trained as a lawyer before turning much of his attention to history and public affairs.

He is best remembered for writing The Law of Civilization and Decay (1895), a book that set out his theory that economic forces and shifts in trade help drive the movement of power from one civilization to another. He later continued these ideas in works such as America's Economic Supremacy and The Theory of Social Revolutions, building a reputation as an energetic and often controversial interpreter of world history.

Adams wrote in a forceful, wide-angle style, looking for patterns that connected finance, empire, conflict, and social change. Even when readers disagreed with him, his work stood out for its ambition and for the bold way it tried to make sense of how civilizations grow, strain, and decline.