Bruni is the author of five bestselling books: The Age of Grievance, about indiscriminate pique and political dysfunction in contemporary America; The Beauty of Dusk, about his imperiled eyesight and what his medical odyssey taught him; Born Round, a memoir about his family's love of food and his own struggles with overeating; Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be, about the college admissions mania;[3] and Ambling Into History, about George W. Bush.
After graduating from Columbia, Bruni joined the staff of the New York Post and then moved on to the Detroit Free Press, where he did a wide range of beats, including a stint covering the Persian Gulf War.
In 1998, he was assigned to the Washington, D.C. bureau, where he covered Capitol Hill and Congress, before being sent on the campaign trail to follow then-Texas Governor George W. Bush.
In a review of it in The Washington Post,[10] Wesleyan University President Michael Roth called it "a humane, measured book" with "lessons for a very wide audience indeed."
Bruni has also done extensive reporting on religion and is the author, with Elinor Burkett, of A Gospel of Shame: Children, Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church.
He once served as a guest judge on Top Chef and appeared briefly in the movie Julie & Julia, which was written and directed by his friend Nora Ephron.
In February 2018, he published a long and unusually personal column for the Times about an affliction that, overnight, robbed him of functional vision in his right eye.
His memoir, The Beauty of Dusk, published by Simon & Schuster, reflects further on the experience and discusses aging and physical limitations among Baby Boomers who once thought themselves invincible.