Book Talk: Emily Oster — The Unexpected
In Expecting Better, Emily Oster revolutionized the pregnancy landscape with her data-driven approach. In the years since, she kept hearing questions from readers on how to approach a second pregnancy when the first has not gone as planned.
While The Unexpected is a book that Oster hopes no one needs, the reality is that 50 percent of pregnancies include complications, a fact we don’t talk about. Preeclampsia, miscarriage, hyperemesis gravidarum, preterm birth, postpartum depression: these are lonely experiences, and that isolation makes treatment harder to access–and crucial research and policy change less likely to happen.
The Unexpected lays out the data on recurrence and treatments shown to lower or mitigate risk for these conditions in subsequent pregnancies. It also provides readers road maps to facilitate productive conversations with their providers, with insights from lauded maternal fetal medicine specialist Dr. Nathan Fox.
By bridging the knowledge gap and making space for difficult conversations, The Unexpected promises to make the hardest parts of pregnancy a little bit less so.
Emily Oster is a professor of economics at Brown University and the author of The Family Firm: A Data-Driven Guide to Better Decision Making in the Early School Years; Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool; and Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong–and What You Really Need to Know. She writes the newsletter ParentData and her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Bloomberg.com. She has two children.
Oster will be in conversation with Abby Phillip, who anchors CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip. She was previously CNN’s senior political correspondent and anchor of Inside Politics Sunday. Phillip has been an essential player in CNN’s Special Coverage of a range of political events, including election nights, State of the Union Addresses and the January 6th Committee hearings. Phillip joined CNN from The Washington Post, she previously worked at ABC News and Politico. Throughout her career she has covered multiple presidents, campaign finance, lobbying, and several presidential campaigns. Phillip was named to the Time 100 Next list in 2021 and she was the recipient of the National Urban League’s Women of Power award. When not on television, she spends time with her husband, daughter and their pup Booker T.
