Lisa Miller

A Joyful Testament to Middle Age

When did Elinor Carucci enter my apartment and take photos of my life? This was exactly how I felt looking at her new book, Midlife, a gorgeous documentary account of domesticity, 20 years in. There is the messy kitchen counter, unpicturesque. There is the couple (at the same counter) paying bills and unpacking groceries, each frame a frozen section of time, implying decades of repetition of household chores.

A Joyful Testament to Middle Age Read More

One Night at Mount Sinai

Aja Newman went to the emergency room for shoulder pain. Her doctor was a superstar. What’s the worst that could happen? Sometime after 2 a.m. on January 12, 2016, Aja Newman roused herself from her hospital gurney and made her way down the long hallway to the bathroom. She had checked in at Mount Sinai’s Emergency Department more than four

One Night at Mount Sinai Read More

Measles for the One Percent

On an unseasonably chilly morning in May, three dozen or so plaintiff-parents, most of them from the Green Meadow Waldorf School, showed up at the Rockland County Courthouse, looking, in their draped layers and comfortable shoes, like any PTA from Park Slope or Berkeley.

Measles for the One Percent Read More

68 Minutes With David Brooks The conservative columnist takes a look inside his soul. But what does he see?

It was 2013,and David Brooks was in the wilderness. Not the literal desert or jungle or anything like that, but the emotional wilderness of an accomplished man who, in midlife, has discovered a deep emptiness at his core. His marriage of 27 years was falling apart. The genteel conservatism in which he was nurtured and raised was morphing into something

68 Minutes With David Brooks The conservative columnist takes a look inside his soul. But what does he see? Read More

The Wife Who Wonders How the Empty Nest Will Remake Her Marriage

Even before she was born, our daughter was our priority. My husband and I married late in our lives, propelled toward each other largely by a mutual urge to procreate, and we saw in the other the qualities necessary for raising a child: stamina, humor, intelligence, kindness, good health, a durable beauty. We hurled ourselves at the strictures of parenthood

The Wife Who Wonders How the Empty Nest Will Remake Her Marriage Read More

Marriage: The Money Story

Marriage has a profound effect on the financial lives of women. And the financial lives of women have a profound effect on their marriages. Why publish a long-form financial investigation about heterosexual marriage? Well, there’s a wealth of available data that proves it’s one of the most-studied social phenomena. And because its effects are surprising — and often troubling. Journalist

Marriage: The Money Story Read More