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It is not often that that the ‘puffs’ about a book contain as many superlatives as those for Graham Music's book do - nor, in my experience, is it often that the reviewer finds herself in such total agreement with them. This is an excellent book, deeply scholarly, yet one which makes the complicated child development research it describes lively and accessible.
Music takes a clear and coherent approach to his very complex topic. He presents the latest research findings from developmental science, genetics and neuroscience, using often complicated ideas presented in a digestible way, to introduce the reader to concepts which aid our understanding of emotional and cognitive processes and illuminate the question of how anyone of us becomes as we are. The book is divided into parts, into chapters and into subdivisions within those chapters which are printed on the front page of each - allowing the reader to be signposted exactly as to where they are going, and enabling someone to find a particular topic with ease. Indeed my only reservation about the book relates to this layout: I did not like the way each chapter began with the contents on a page on the right-hand side, making the first page of text on the left - somehow at odds with what we expect in a way I found strangely disconcerting. Yet, despite this way of presenting information within distinct sections, Music has also kept a thread going throughout the book so that there is a feeling that ideas are built upon. He logically starts with Beginnings of Emotional and Social Development (Part I), which takes us from conception and birth into early relating, the importance of attunement, mismatches, the effects of maternal depression and an introduction to theory of mind, among other topics. We are then given a fairly thorough opportunity to think about what he calls the Overarching Bodies of Ideas (Part II), which includes attachment theory, the importance of culture, and a description of biology and the brain which