Gopnik presents some of the latest research in developmental psychology. She gives insight into what it’s like to be a baby. For example, while older children and adults are able to focus their attention on something specific, as a spotlight would, babies soak up their whole environment at once, which Gopnik calls “lantern consciousness.” Adults can come close to achieving this kind of openness through experiences like travel and meditation. She also talks about memory. Babies do remember past events but lack the autobiographical memory that adults have. In other words, they don’t experience their lives as a single coherent timeline stretching back into the past and forward into the future. They also lack what Gopnik calls an “inner executive”—the observing, remembering, deciding self. Their inner consciousness, she says, is more like wandering than voyaging along a particular path.

Overall a pretty interesting book. The whole effort doesn't hang together that well--sometimes it seems like a stretch to link the research with philosophy. Also, some of the material is the same as what she and her colleagues covered in The Scientist in the Crib, published ten years earlier. If you want a summary, check out the last chapter of the book. Gopnik is a good speaker and you can watch one of her lectures, “What Do Babies Think?”, on ted.com.