Lizzy Ratner

Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God, and Diversity on Steroids
By Julie Salamon
The Penguin Press, 363 pages, $25.95

For anyone with a healthy fear of death, disease or antibiotic-resistant bacteria, the idea of spending more than an hour in a hospital—let alone a day or a week—is deeply unnerving, about as terrifying as being forced to swim naked in a tank of leeches. It’s not just the in-your-face possibility of death at any moment, around every corner. It’s the stench of bodily fluids, the click and suck of oxygen machines, the boredom of waiting, the drama of waiting, the migraine-green hue of everything and, of course, those ubiquitous hand sanitizers that seem to do little beyond reminding you just how germ-ridden your local hospital is. No wonder the wild, life-and-death world of modern hospitals gets woefully little attention from the press.  read more »

COMFORTABLY NUMB: HOW PSYCHIATRY IS MEDICATING A NATION
By Charles Barber
Pantheon, 280 pages, $26

It’s hard to believe it, but our little baby is growing up. Prozac has just turned 20.

It’s been quite a heady two decades for our favorite mood-boosting pill, a regular Drew Barrymore kind of childhood, with books and articles and wanton declarations accompanying each stage of its precocious life. There were the wide-eyed Listening to Prozac years, the wild and fawning Prozac Nation years, even the troubled teenage years when it was dogged by accusations that it caused everything from suicide to impotence.  read more »

On a recent evening, Eric Tate and Allison Kramer, urban professionals in their 30’s, were entertaining another couple in their apartment in Astoria. They had little reason to think that the evening would be anything less than Rachael Ray-perfect: a nice lasagna, a bottle of wine …  read more »

YOUR INNER FISH: A JOURNEY INTO THE 3.5-BILLION-YEAR HISTORY OF THE HUMAN BODY
By Neil Shubin
Pantheon, 229 pages, $24

When the renowned paleontologist Neil Shubin announced in 2006 that he’d discovered an ancient fossil with an uncanny resemblance to a “missing link” between fish and land-dwellers, creationists responded with all the fury of pissed off-apes. Jumping, hooting and thumping their chests, they denounced the discovery as secular “propaganda” and trashed Dr. Shubin’s creature, named Tiktaalik, as nothing more than a desperate, pro-evolution publicity stunt.

“With the continued invalidation of the corrupt theory of neo-Darwinism in the eyes of many, and school boards nationwide taking a favorable look at intelligent design, it is not surprising that evolutionists are scrambling to enact damage control,” wrote Frank Sherwin, a “creation scientist,” in a news post for the Institute for Creation Research shortly after the story of Tiktaalik landed on the front page of The New York Times. “Enter an alleged ‘missing link’ that some are saying reveals one of the greatest changes in the field of zoology.”  read more »

A French author has finally declared baby backlash—when will fertility-frantic New York feminists follow suit?  read more »

As a routine, it seemed to be yet another flawless Clinton production, an ingenious – and admittedly, appealing – way to reach out to The View vote while neither scaring them off nor appearing so Martha Stewart one minute that she couldn’t go on to discuss her China policy the next. It was Steel Magnolias feminism at its best.  read more »

Inevitability wears on left-leaning Clinton holdouts; Obama supporters start to surrender.  read more »

The star of Mauritius plays dark on stage, but 21-year-old stage actress Alison Pill has an awful lot to smile about.  read more »

It's the Californication of New York. Why do so many of us rely on a four-wheeled friend?  read more »

Oprah loves him. He’s a genius surgeon at one of New York’s best hospitals. Can dashing heart doc Mehmet Oz save your life, too?  read more »

The two entrepreneurs behind Vita Coco—drink du jour, hangover cure, love potion—promise “vacation in a bottle!”  read more »

"It's a madhouse here." So quoth a flack at Scholastic, the publishers of the eagerly awaited Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book in the series by J.K. Rowling.

With three days, six hours, 26 minutes, and 12 seconds until the book goes on sale in bookstores midnight on Friday night, a set of photographs depicting each page of the book was uploaded to the bittorrent file-sharing site, Pirate Bay.  read more »

They fall in love, buy strollers, hire cooks—Heath, Michelle, Liv, Nicole join prissy new bourgeoisie!  read more »

You must be feeling pretty good about yourselves these days, ever since those Norwegian epidemiologists conferred the equivalent of intellectual primogeniture on all of you.  read more »

A professor lobbies City Hall to build giant river walls before we’re submerged.  read more »

Remember flashing? Abe Beame? Robin Byrd? $300 West Side rents? Wake up and recall the urine! If you can’t, the vets say you’re not a real New Yorker.  read more »

So It Happened That Matthew Bronfman, Son of Edgar, Laid Claim to the World Jewish Congress, and So Did Ron Lauder, Son of Estée … and Matthew Was Told, ‘You Have What It Takes to Be a Great Leader of the Jewish People’; Then Was There Much Smoke and Noise and Rending of Garments, and Edgar Sr. Did Quit as President.  read more »

Matthew Bronfman's bid to lead the World Jewish Congress is turning into a big mess.  read more »

Elizabeth Yeampierre is not the cheerleading type. As executive director of an environmental and anti-poverty organization in Sunset Park, she is most often in the role of protester, marching down the street with a bullhorn and placard.  read more »

The big northeaster was a little preview; say goodbye to marshes, beaches and Battery Park City.  read more »

He finds three-stop adulation, but also questions about his readiness.  read more »

Dana Vachon, the 28-year-old banker turned blogger turned novelist about town, was not wearing socks  read more »

In the catalog of hypochondriac horror fantasies, there are few nightmares worse than that of a miss  read more »

With each week, a new parade of Presidential contenders arrives in New York for a mix of intimate, l  read more »

For all the stuffy ladies’ lunches, and high-dollar dinners featuring this or that Presidentia  read more »

Before Gary Coleman arrived for autographs, before Wonder Woman waylaid Stephen Colbert, before a tr  read more »

Ever since rumors began to swirl that Air America Radio might declare bankruptcy—a rumor that  read more »

The diamond mines of Sierra Leone are a long way from the Hilton New York, the gaudy midtown tourist  read more »

When it comes to the sins of Marie Antoinette, everyone has heard about her parties, her clothes, he  read more »

Remember the roaring 80’s?  read more »

On a recent un-wintry Wednesday, two days after his latest book arrived on shelves, Calvin Trillin,  read more »

William Samuels, Democratic donor, semi-retired businessman and son of three-time gubernatorial cand  read more »

Arthur Gelb, fabled New York Timesman and man of many words, grows oddly reticent when the subject o  read more »

Arthur Gelb, fabled New York Times man and man of many words, grows oddly reticent when the subject  read more »

If they squint, the extended Jong-Fast clan—a family of artists, writers and wild-child red diaper  read more »

If they squint, the extended Jong-Fast clan—a family of artists, writers and wild-child red di  read more »

They tried to put the best face on it.  read more »

They tried to put the best face on it.    read more »

Dr.  read more »

Dr.  read more »

The SAT, that infamous rite of terror and No.  read more »

When young whippersnappers arrive at medical school in the fall of their first year, it’s not unco  read more »

When young whippersnappers arrive at medical school in the fall of their first year, it’s not  read more »

On the morning of Wednesday, Sept.  read more »

On the morning of Wednesday, Sept.  read more »

There are certain grand historical fights that you think are over, tucked into the quaint Snoopy lun  read more »

Bounteous nature has cooked up countless unpleasant ways for us to meet our maker, from the sudden h  read more »

There are certain grand historical fights that you think are over, tucked into the quaint Snoopy lun  read more »

Bounteous nature has cooked up countless unpleasant ways for us to meet our maker, from the sudden h  read more »

Back before Tribeca became the sun-dappled playground of New York’s Hollywood-on-the-Hudson set, M  read more »