Why do we catch colds? What causes seasons to change? And if you fire a bullet from a gun and drop one from your hand, which bullet hits the ground first? In a pinch we almost always get these questions wrong. Worse, we regularly misconstrue fundamental qualities of the world around us. In this eye-opening book, developmental psychologist Andrew Shtulman shows that the root of our misconceptions lies in the theories about the world we develop as children, which close our minds to ideas inconsistent with them, making us unable to learn science later in life. If we rebuild our knowledge from its foundations, Shtulman suggests, the reward won't just be a truer picture of the world, but clearer solutions to many controversies—around vaccines, climate change, or evolution—that plague our politics today.