This is among the most intriguing, yet infuriating, books I have ever read. Written by a leading developmental psychologist, it discusses important, even profound, issues regarding the nature of human development, while raising significant policy issues that challenge how we as a society approach caring for the less fortunate.

At one level, the book is a critique of what Lewis sees as the dominant paradigm of development in psychology—what he calls the organismic approach—and a defense of his preferred alternative, the contextual model. The organismic model, in Lewis's