Henry Brooks Adams (February 16, 1838 – March 27, 1918) was an American historian and a prominent figure in the world of letters. He was a member of the Adams political family, descended from two U.S. presidents, John Adams and John Quincy Adams.

Adams graduated from Harvard and served as secretary to his father, Charles Francis Adams, who was Abraham Lincoln's ambassador to the United Kingdom. This position exposed him to wartime diplomacy and English culture, especially the works of John Stuart Mill.

After the American Civil War, Henry Adams became a political journalist and entertained America's foremost intellectuals at his homes in Washington and Boston. During his lifetime, he was best known for The History of the United States of America 1801–1817, a nine-volume work praised for its literary style and command of documentary evidence.

His posthumously published memoir, The Education of Henry Adams, won the Pulitzer Prize and was named by the Modern Library as the best English-language nonfiction book of the 20th century.