Every year the Board of Directors of the Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology selects an individual to review the literature pertinent to obstetric anesthesiology published the previous calendar year. This individual selects the most notable contributions, creates a syllabus of the articles, and then presents his/her overview in an annual lecture named in honor of the late Gerard W. Ostheimer, a pioneering obstetric anesthesiologist from the Brigham and Women's Hospital. This article reviews the literature published in 2014 focusing on the themes of labor analgesia and cesarean delivery. Its contents were presented as the Gerard W. Ostheimer Lecture at the 47th Annual Meeting of the Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology, May 16, 2015, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The syllabus is available as Supplemental Digital Content (http://links.lww.com/AA/B397).