08-05-2025
Publishing tycoon 'caught in a lie' after gushing about critically-acclaimed book she 'loved'
A publishing tycoon who gushed over a critically acclaimed book has been accused of lying about ever reading it.
Editor Jane Pratt told New York Magazine that 'The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness', by Susannah Cahalan was 'one of the best nonfiction books I've found within the last couple years'.
But eagle eyed readers have suggested Pratt is the one pretending, after poking holes in a synopsis she gave to New York magazine.
Cahalan's book is an exploration of Stanford psychologist David Rosenhan's experiment, in which he claimed to have sent seven graduate students with fake psychological issues to psychiatric hospitals, only for them to be committed and then unable to get back out.
The findings were held up as a watershed moment and a damning indictment on the psychiatry field.
However Rosenhan's research has since been widely debunked, including by Cahalan.
This aspect was completely omitted by editor Pratt in her summary of the book, which she listed as part of a feature titled '37 Things Jane Pratt Can't Live Without'.
Pratt noted that the book covers Stanford University in the 1970s, a period which also produced the infamous Stanford prison experiment.
'This is about a guy from that era who — it's just the most crazy thing — sent people who were not mentally ill to mental institutions,' Pratt said.
'He got them to be accepted, then had them try to prove their sanity to get out, and they couldn't.'
Author Freddie deBoer called out the discrepancy in his Substack in an article titled, 'Apparently Jane Pratt Doesn't Actually Read Books; Does the Staff at New York Magazine?'
'This isn't a case of some 19-year-old incompetently summarizing a book they were assigned to read but didn't in college,' deBoer fumed.
'It's an adult woman, an editor and writer, voluntarily participating in this feature and plugging a book she clearly cannot have read.
'Why she would do that, I really can't imagine; surely there's a book that she actually finished that she could recommend? Why do this? However you slice it, it's embarrassing.'
Pratt is a veteran of the publishing industry who founded Sassy, a magazine for teen girls when she was just 24-year-old.
She has since launched the award winning Jane magazine, online outlet XOJane and Another Jane Pratt Thing among other projects.
