An astounding account of how gesture, long overlooked, is essential to how we learn and interact, which “changes the way you think about yourself and the people around you.” (Ethan Kross, bestselling author of Chatter)

We all know people who talk with their hands—but do they know what they’re saying with them? Our gestures can reveal and contradict us, and express thoughts we may not even know we’re thinking. 

In Thinking with Your Hands, esteemed cognitive psychologist Susan Goldin-Meadow argues that gesture is vital to how we think, learn, and communicate. She shows us, for instance, how the height of our gestures can reveal unconscious bias, or how the shape of a student’s gestures can track their mastery of a new concept—even when they’re still giving wrong answers. She compels us to rethink everything from how we set child development milestones, to what’s admissible in a court of law, to whether Zoom is an adequate substitute for in-person conversation.  

Sweeping and ambitious, Thinking with Your Hands promises to transform the way we think about language and communication.

Susan Goldin-Meadow is the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor in the department of psychology and committee on human development at the University of Chicago. Winner of the 2021 Rumelhart Prize in cognitive science, she is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.