The Rise and Fall of David Brooks

David Brooks: I grew up in a home, if anybody saw Fiddler in the Roof, you know how hugging and emotional Jewish families can be. And so we had love in the home, but we didn't express it. We had a phrase around our neighborhood, thinky-a-dish-act British. So that was the world I was inhabiting. But then life has a way of tenderizing you. And so I think I've become more emotionally open and have written more personally. "I'm now just a fountain of gushy emotion," he says.