He was the senior national affairs writer for The Wall Street Journal from 1993 to 2000, where he won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for articles that became the starting point for his first book, A Hope in the Unseen.

His other books include The Price of Loyalty, The One Percent Doctrine, The Way of the World, Confidence Men, and his memoir Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism, from which he made an Emmy Award-winning, Academy Award-nominated feature documentary.

In 1995, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for two articles on Cedric Jennings, a student at inner-city Ballou High School in Washington, D.C., who wanted to attend MIT.

On May 13, 2014, he appeared on The Daily Show to discuss his book Life, Animated, the real-life story of his autistic son, Owen Suskind, and "his irrepressible wife," Cornelia.

At the Shorenstein Center he conducted four workshops for students about the process of reporting and writing titled, "Truth and Consequences: Crafting Powerful Narratives in the Age of Message.

An October 2004 cover story by Suskind in the New York Times Magazine stated that the president was planning to partially privatize Social Security as his first initiative if re-elected—a disclosure that prompted controversy in the final two weeks of the campaign.

[citation needed] In the article, Suskind quoted an unnamed advisor to Bush (later identified as someone who "seems to have been" Rove)[11][12] as saying that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'

[16] In a review of the book, CNN declared: "As more voters, politicos and talk-show hosts write off affirmative action as a well-intentioned anachronism, A Hope in the Unseen should be required reading for would-be opinion-mongers.

Suskind stated that this "writing style" was a delving into motive and intent in an effort to understand the "good enough reasons" that underlie actions, which allowed for a fuller, more accurate—and often emotionally powerful—rendering of characters.

O'Neill, in a November 2002 meeting with Cheney and other senior officials, said that it was unprecedented to cut taxes at a time of war and that the cuts—which included the wealthiest Americans—would eventually push the government toward "fiscal crisis."

Based on interviews with more than a hundred sources, including several cabinet officials, the book concluded that U.S. foreign policy since 9/11 was driven by the Bush Doctrine, which is described by a quote from Vice President Dick Cheney saying that it was important for the U.S. to think of "low probability, high impact events"—like terrorists or rogue states getting their hands on WMD—"in a new way."

It's about our response.The doctrine, Suskind asserts, freed the administration from the dictates of evidence and allowed suspicion to be a guide for action in both its battles against terrorists and against rogue states, like Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

"[25] Despite being vetted by the CIA prior to publication, the book contained enough information to identify Aimen Dean, a mole within al Qaeda who had spent seven and a half years working for MI6 and had proven one of their most valuable assets.

Frank Rich called it a "must-read bestseller" while Michael Hill stated: "If Bob Woodward is the chronicler of the Bush administration, Ron Suskind is the analyst ...

Among these stories are the tales of an intelligence official working to combat nuclear terrorism, a detainee lawyer fighting for rights at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, a young Pakistani man interrogated under the White House, an Afghan teenager who spends a year in American high school, and former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto as she returns to Pakistan to challenge President Pervez Musharraf.

[27] In his assessment for the Literary Review, Michael Burleigh said: "Using a series of interwoven stories, some hopeful, others disturbing, Suskind explores whether the United States and the Muslim world will ever be able to find mutual respect and understanding.

"[29] Mark Danner, reviewing the book for The New York Times, writes that "these narratives and others perform, in Mr. Suskind's hands, an intricate arabesque and manage, to a rather remarkable degree, to show us, in this age of terror, 'the true way of the world.

'"[30] It is around the stories of these characters that the book frames the debate about how America lost much of its moral authority in recent years and how it is struggling, often through the actions and initiative of individuals, to restore it.

The book also contends that the Central Intelligence Agency resettled Habbush, paid him $5 million, and forged a document in his name alleging that 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta trained in Iraq.

[34] In response to the official CIA statement, Suskind told The Washington Post that the disclosures and details in his book are backed up by hours of interviews and that there is "not a shred of doubt about any of it.

[36] The Way of the World debuted at number 3 on The New York Times Best Seller list,[37] but some remarked that its revelations did not produce the outrage or scandal that would seem to attend a White House-run disinformation campaign aimed at U.S. public opinion.

The New York Times, having obtained an advanced copy, wrote: "The book offers a portrait of a White House operating under intense pressure as it dealt with a cascade of crises, from insolvent banks to collapsing carmakers.

"[44] An article in The Washington Post on September 16 elaborated on the content of the book, citing the allegation that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner ignored a directive from the president to draw up plans for restructuring Citibank in the spring of 2009.

Communications director Dan Pfeiffer said that books like these "tend to take the normal day-to-day activities of governing and infuse them with drama, palace intrigue and salacious details".

[55][not specific enough to verify] The memoir describes the Suskind family's two-decade journey in connecting with their youngest son Owen, who was diagnosed at age 3 with regressive autism, lost his ability to speak, and then developed an obsessive interest in Disney movies.

Once the family discovered this, they began to play the roles of animated characters and conversing in Disney dialogue – a method that over years helped their son regain speech.

[56] In the memoir, Suskind explains how the family and therapists helped Owen use the Disney stories to relate to real situations, develop "inner speech" capacities, and gradually connect to others.

The Suskinds found that these deep interests – long viewed as unproductive obsessions that should be curtailed – are more "pathway than prison" for individuals with autism or other untraditional learners, insofar they use them "like an enigma machine to crack the codes of the wider world and find their way forward.

"[58][59] The New York Times book review of Life, Animated wrote that Suskind "charts Owen's remarkable journey back to connection through the unlikely vehicle of the Disney cartoons that are his only passion.

"[68] A&E Indie Films announced in August 2014 that it was producing a documentary, directed by Academy Award-winning director Roger Ross Williams, on Owen and the Suskinds' story.