The chronic chronicler of a generation, feminist author Naomi Wolf writes books that get people talking. Her first, the international best-seller The Beauty Myth, launched a debate about female body image that continues to rage today. She followed that stunning debut with Fire with Fire, which focuses on women and power, and Promiscuities, a book about young women’s emerging sexuality. Over the past decade, Wolf’s way with words and telegenic personality have earned her the title 'the Gloria Steinem of the ’90s.' The former Rhodes scholar gained notoriety when she was tapped as a high-paid 'image consultant' for Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign.

While Wolf’s books are always thoroughly researched works, they usually weave in some measure of personal experience, an element that has helped assure her a loyal fan base. When word got out that Wolf was pregnant with her first child, readers knew it was only a matter of time before she published something about it. Sure enough, seven years and two children later, Wolf is out with Misconceptions (Doubleday, 2001), her critique of pregnancy and birth in America.

Though many say they saw it coming, Wolf insists that she didn’t set out to write about motherhood. 'It wasn’t my goal,' she says. 'But as I lived the experience of becoming a mother, the words just started flowing out of me.' Wolf and her husband, David Shipley, have two children, Rosa, 6, and Joey, 1. She spoke with senior editor Andy Steiner from her home in New York City.

You recently moved from the suburbs to an apartment in New York City. How do you like raising children in a bustling urban area?

Large cities can be really wonderful and community-based places to raise children, partly because you are away from the tyranny of automobiles. I love that in this city kids can run in and out of stores where they know the storekeepers, and they see a wide variety of people on the street. For me, living in the suburbs contributed to the postpartum depression that I wrote about in Misconceptions. Our culture makes the experience of new motherhood a particularly isolating one, and I found that the suburban environment is especially isolating for women and the children they care for. Every day, our suburb became this ghost town of white women and their babies. Sure, you could go to the playground and be with the other moms, but you got the feeling that you were still living at the margins of American life, away from the rest of the world.