Early Life and Career
Suskind was born in Kingston, New York, to a Jewish family. He grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, attended the University of Virginia, was a brother of the SPE fraternity, and lived on The Lawn during the 1980-1981 school year. In 2005, he was the university's valediction speaker. In 1983 he received a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
In 1990, Suskind went to the Wall Street Journal, and became senior national affairs reporter in 1993. 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. Suskind left the Journal in 2000.
Suskind has written five books, and published in periodicals including Esquire and The New York Times Magazine. In 2004, he discussed his book, The Price of Loyalty, on CBS's 60 Minutes. In 2006 he discussed The One Percent Doctrine on the Colbert Report, and in 2008 he discussed The Way of the World on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and again appeared on the show when his 2011 book, Confidence Men, was published. He has also appeared on NBC's "The Today Show", ABC's Nightline and PBS's Charlie Rose. In 2001 and 2002, he was a regular contributor to "Life 360," a joint production of ABC and PBS. Between 2004 and 2008, he appeared frequently on Frontline, the PBS series.
In the spring of 2012, Suskind was the A.M. Rosenthal Writer-in-Residence at the Harvard Kennedy School's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. At the Shorenstein Center he conducting four workshops for students about the process of reporting and writing titled, "Truth and Consequences: Crafting Powerful Narratives in the Age of Message."
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