Anne Paul

Blogger, Consultant, Journalist, Parent, Writer/Editor

Annie Murphy Paul is a magazine journalist and book author whose writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, Salon, Discover, the Boston Globe Ideas section, Self, Shape, Health, Ladies Home Journal, and O: The Oprah Magazine, among many other publications. A former senior editor at Psychology Today magazine, she was awarded the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism. She is the author of The Cult of Personality, a cultural history and scientific critique of personality testing that was hailed by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker as "fascinating" and selected as an Editor's Choice by The New York Times Book Review. Her latest book is Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives, published by the Free Press in September 2010. A New York Times Magazine article based on the book was selected for inclusion in The Best American Science Writing 2009. Jerome Groopman, the New Yorker writer and doctor, called it "informative and wise" in his cover-page review in the New York Times Book Review; in his Sunday Times op-ed column, Nicholas Kristof called it "a terrific and important new book" that offers "a new window into the unexpected forces that shape us." Other major reviews included The Wall Street Journal ("commendable" and "persuasive”) and the Washington Post (“honorable about examining the scientific, social and moral complexities of her subject.”) Media appearances for Origins included the “Today Show,” “Morning Edition,” “The Diane Rehm Show,” MSNBC, CNN and Fox News. An excerpt of Origins became a cover story in Time Magazine; the book was also excerpted on the websites of Discover, Scientific American, National Public Radio, and Babble.com. Origins was chosen as one of the “Best Books of 2010" by Publishers Weekly, which called it a “fascinating study of the prenatal period” which “reveals that this pivotal period may be even more significant and far-reaching than imagined.”

fetal origins, mental health, pregnancy, psychology