I'm sympathetic to the thesis underlying this work, but the book made a miserable case for it. Some of their arguments are just bizarre (i.e. that interest in something like sports statistics is a childlike reversion to our interest in getting good grades in school [as if it was children who invented schools and grading systems], or that as we become more childlike we become more violent [Lord of the Flies besides, I hardly tend to associate violence with children]).

The book is built on broad generalizations, rigid, ethnocentric ideas of human development and childhood, and a curious but undeveloped argument that humans have ruined themselves by emphasizing their intellectual "mammalian brain" at the expense of their instinctual "lizard brain". ( )

Intriguing hypotheses. For example, that Primitive people are led by the wise; modern civilization is led by the sick.

The authors find a thread running through all civilizations. So much of what man does, the way he behaves, the things he likes can be explained as a result of what is "structurally embedded in his anatomical configuration". The analysis of the morphology is convincing.

By understanding the "thread of infantilization" they seek and lead us to a greater understanding of our "inordinately powerful, creative, gifted--and unruly-- species." ( )