Biography of Ron Suskind

Ron Suskind is one of America’s leading authors and journalists. His latest book, The Price of Loyalty, George W. Bush, the White House and the Education of Paul O'Neill, is a sweeping tour of the inner working of the Bush administration. The New York Times#1 Bestseller follows the two-year arc of Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury Secretary and a principal of the National Security Council, as he and other senior officials assess the conduct and character of this Presidency.

Price, which is based on unprecedented access to senior officials and 19,000 internal government documents given to the author by Mr. O’Neill, is sure to stand unchallenged as the most explosive and historically significant book of the election year. The New York Times called it “an invaluable contribution both to the historical record and to the fierce public debate over the nature of the Bush administration's true views and motivations on issues of war and peace"; The Los Angeles Times termed it “incandescent,” Business Week called it “eye-popping”. It will stand, said novelist Ward Just in the New York Observer, “as a first-rate piece of work” and “the best we’re likely to have for some time” about the Bush Presidency. Forbes selected Price as the “Business Book of the Year,” Fortune cited it as one of the 75 “smartest” books ever written, and it was awarded first prize as Best Book of 2004 by the Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Mr. Suskind is also the author of A Hope in the Unseen, An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League, (Doubleday/Broadway, 1998), which follows the two year journey of a prickly, religious honor student as he escapes from a blighted, Washington, D.C. terrain to find a home at Brown University. The book, which was launched by a series in The Wall Street Journal, that won him the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing, has been a favorite on U.S. campuses and in book clubs. Hundreds of universities and colleges across the nation have used his book in the classroom, and numerous secondary schools have placed it on their required summer reading lists.

From 1993 to 2000, Mr. Suskind was the senior national affairs writer for The Wall Street Journal. He was a contributor to Profiles in Courage for Our Times, (Hyperion, 2002), along with other prize-winning authors. He currently writes for various national magazines, including The New York Times Magazine and Esquire Magazine. His October 17, 2004 cover story in The New York Times Magazine – Without a Doubt: Faith, Certainty, and the Presidency of George W. Bush– is widely cited among the most definitive articles about President Bush in recent times.

Mr. Suskind has appeared on various network news programs as a correspondent or essayist and is a distinguished visiting scholar at Dartmouth College. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and lives in Washington with his wife, Cornelia Kennedy Suskind, and their two sons.

Mr. Suskind’s lecture topics include:

Discovering the "Unseen"
Mr. Suskind helps audiences rethink their notions of merit, to unlock a deeper understanding of education, opportunity and lasting success in both the public and private arenas. In this presentation, mixing stories from the transforming A Hope in the Unseen and his own life, Mr. Suskind transforms conventional notions of what's possible in American life. People leave the room having wept and cheered, with memorable lines jotted on the backs of envelopes and business cards. There are so many lessons to be learned from A Hope in the Unseen that in 2004 Appalachian State University adopted the book as its required summer reading for incoming freshmen.

The Price of Loyalty
In the Corporate Office or the White House, deftly handling internal politics is the key to success. Finding agreed upon facts, dealing with disputes before they deepen, carefully placing "honest brokers" throughout an organization to break log-jams and get good information rising to the top are crucial. The key, on balance, is creating an environment that rests on two basic ideas:
1) Right answers exist
2) Best ideas win, no matter what their source
This presentation will offer fascinating tales of what has worked, or not, inside the world's most visible and vivid management drama- the White House- and how those lessons can change life in the workplace