Washington College. In 2008, President George W. Bush awarded Brookhiser the National Humanities Medal in a White House ceremony. Cancer and marijuana use Brookhiser became ill with testicular cancer in 1992 and smoked marijuana to alleviate nausea from chemotherapy. (Before that, he had smoked marijuana in college about ten times, he said.) "Because of the marijuana, my last two courses of chemotherapy were almost nausea-free," he said in 1996. "My cancer is gone now, I was lucky." On March 6, 1996, he testified before a congressional committee about using marijuana, urging the committee members to support decriminalization of marijuana for medical purposes. "My support for medical marijuana is not a contradiction of my principles, but an extension of them," Brookhiser told the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime. "I am for law and order. But crime has to be fought intelligently and the law disgraces itself when it harasses the sick. I am for traditional virtues, but if carrying your beliefs to unjust ends is not moral, it is philistine." Personal life He lives in Manhattan (East Village) with his wife, Jeanne Safer, a psychotherapist and author, most recently, of The Normal One. They also have a home in Ulster County in the Catskills. Books Give Me Liberty: A History of America's Exceptional Idea, 304 pages (Basic Books: 2019) John Marshall: The Man Who Made the Supreme Court, 324 pages (Basic Books: 2018) Founders' Son: A Life of Abraham Lincoln, 376 pages (Basic Books: 2014) James Madison, 304 pages (Basic Books: 2011) Right Time, Right Place: Coming of Age with William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement, 272 pages (Basic Books: 2009) George Washington on Leadership, 269 pages (Basic Books: 2008) What Would the Founders Do?: Our Questions, Their Answers, 261 pages (Basic Books: 2006) Contents links. Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris, the Rake Who Wrote the Constitution, 272 pages (Free Press: 2003) Rules of Civility: The 110 Precepts That Guided Our First President in War and Peace, 90 pages (University of Virginia Press: 2003) America's First Dynasty : The Adamses, 1735–1918, 256 pages (Free Press: 2002) George Washington: A National Treasure, 104 pages (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution: 2002) Fighting the Good Fight: A History of the New York Conservative Party, 434 pages (St. Augustine's Press: 2002) (Contributor) Patriot Sage: George Washington and the American Political Tradition, editors Gary L. Gregg, Matthew Spalding, William J. Bennett, 355 pages (ISI