The American historian Peter Chardon Brooks Adams (1848-1927) stimulated studies of his field in the United States by outlining his belief that economic and geographic conditions affect the course of history.

Brooks Adams was born on June 24, 1848, in Quincy, Mass. His father, Charles Francis Adams, was the son of one U.S. president and the grandson of another. His mother, Abigail, was the daughter of Peter Chardon Brooks, a wealthy Massachusetts merchant.

After an unhappy childhood, Adams entered Harvard in 1866. He graduated from Harvard Law School and was admitted to the bar in 1873. But the practice of law never appealed to him, and so, independently wealthy because of a legacy from his maternal grandfather, he decided to pursue his own interests in writing and politics. He achieved prominence in the Massachusetts Democratic party and was widely mentioned in 1898 as a possibility for the governorship, but he broke with...