Samuels' first article to receive much public attention was a controversial 1991 cover story on rap music in The New Republic; the piece contended that the primary hip-hop audience consisted of white suburban teens and has been widely anthologized.

His pieces for Harper's are often panoramic takes on a single event including the demolition of the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas,[7] the riot at Woodstock 1999,[8] a Donald Rumsfeld press conference at the Pentagon,[9] and Super Bowl XL in Detroit.

"[12] To open his long profile of the rapper Kanye West titled "American Mozart" in the May 2012 issue of The Atlantic, Samuels told of meeting President Barack Obama at a fundraiser at the Manhattan restaurant Daniel and asking him who he liked better–West or his Watch the Throne collaborator Jay-Z.

"[2] His immersive profile of White House speechwriter and deputy National Security advisor Ben Rhodes, published in the May 8, 2016 issue of The New York Times Magazine examined the use of traditional narrative techniques in the making and selling of American foreign policy in the age of social media.

On August 20, 2019, Samuels published a highly personal account of an encounter with the musician Neil Young in The New York Times Magazine in which the writer described his youngest son's struggle with a sensory processing disorder.

[13] In the spring of 2008, Samuels published Only Love Can Break Your Heart—a collection of his journalism—along with The Runner: A True Account of the Amazing Lies and Fantastical Adventures of the Ivy League Impostor James Hogue.

"[16] Reviewing The Runner for The New York Times, Keith Gessen wrote "Samuels is an elite narrative journalist, a master at teasing out the social and moral implications of the smallest small talk.

"[17] Writing separately in the same publication about Only Love Can Break Your Heart, Jascha Hoffman described the collection as "a tribute to the twin American traditions of self-invention and self-deceit" and the author as "a brilliant reporter who has made a career of observing 'our national gift for self-delusion and for making ourselves up from scratch.