[citation needed] Rattiner writes more than 300 articles a year on topics including science, humor, sports, world affairs, architecture, history, and scandal.

[citation needed] In 1975, Time published a feature story about him entitled "Hoaxer of the Hamptons," in which it covered his penchant for creating East End myths and legends.

[2] In 1969 he wrote an article which resulted in demonstrations that saved the Montauk Lighthouse from being torn down by the United States Coast Guard as part of its belt-tightening program, a story that is featured at montauklighthouse.com.

In 2008, Stony Brook University in Stony Brook Long Island began The Dan Rattiner Collection for his papers, letters, drawings, travel diaries and manuscripts in their climate controlled Whitman Library In 2011, Rattiner was among the defendants in a libel and defamation suit against the New Yorker magazine and others for a 2010 article in Dan's Papers, partly based on the New Yorker article.

[7] Rattiner has written 12 books, including the memoir In The Hamptons: My Fifty Years With Farmers, Fishermen, Writers, Artists, Billionaires and Celebrities, published by Random House in 2008 with an introduction by Edward Albee.

[8] The Hamptons Too: Further Encounters With Farmers, Fishermen, Artists, Billionaires, and Celebrities, with a foreword by Alec Baldwin, was published by the State University of New York Press in May 2010.

A third memoir, "Still in the Hamptons: More Tales of the Rich, the Famous and the Rest of Us," with an introductory quote by Walter Isaacson, was published by the State University Press in July 2012.

His art depicted the East End of Long Island, both its landscape and people ranging from "farmers, movie stars, fishermen and Wall Streeters," as well as broader cultural themes.