John Brooks is best known for his seminal work Business Adventures which, in 2014, Bill Gates called the “best book on business ever”.
Brooks was a financial journalist and longtime contributor to The New Yorker magazine, where he worked for many years as a staff writer specializing in business and finance, including numerous interviews with business luminaries during his long tenure. Brooks wrote with a wry tone that enlivened the critical minutiae of business stories making the themes he wrote about still broadly relevant today. He was the author of ten non-fiction books on business and finance, including The Go-Go Years: The Drama and Crashing Finale of Wall Street’s Bullish 60s and Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street, 1920–1938.
Brooks is also the author of three novels and was well known for his work for authors’ rights. He was the president of the Authors Guild from 1975 to 1979, vice president of PEN America from 1962 to 1966, vice president of the Society of American Historians in 1984 and was a trustee of the New York Public Library from 1978 to 1994.
