He has written for publications including The New York Times, The Hudson Review, Ecco Press, Atheneum, Grand Street, GQ, and Talk.
At the time of the 9/11 attacks, Smith was working as an editor at The Village Voice and a contributor to Artforum.
[2] By his own account in his book, The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations., Smith was dissatisfied with the Orientalist explanations of the Muslim world as presented by Edward Said, whom he had met and spoken with about the region.
As a result, he took a job as a foreign correspondent for The Weekly Standard and spent years reporting from the region.
[5] His follow-up book, The Permanent Coup: How Enemies Foreign and Domestic Targeted the American President, was published in 2020.