Baby Meets World

A dynamic new story about how babies make their way in the world—and how grown-ups have tried to make sense of these tiny inscrutable beings.

As a new parent, Nicholas Day had some basic but confounding questions: *Why does my son find the straitjacket of his swaddling blanket comforting and not terrifying? How can he never meet a developmental norm and still be OK? And when will he stop sucking my finger?* So he went digging for answers. They were not what he expected.

Drawing on a wealth of perspectives—scientific, historical, cross-cultural, personal—*Baby Meets World* is organized around the mundane activities that dominate the life of an infant: sucking, smiling, touching, toddling. From these everyday activities, Day weaves together an account that is anything but ordinary: a fresh, surprising story, both weird and wondrous, about our first experience of the world.

Part hidden history of parenthood, part secret lives of babies, *Baby Meets World* steps back from the moment-to-moment chaos of babydom. It allows readers to see infancy anew in all its strangeness and splendor.