In a New Yorker cartoon about marital relations, a husband tells his wife, “Of course I care about how you imagined I thought you perceived I wanted you to feel.”

In When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows , Steven Pinker (a professor of psychology at Harvard University and, author, among many books, of Rationality , The Stuff of Thought , How the Mind Works , and The Better Angels of Our Nature ) draws on research in the cognitive and behavioral sciences, game theory and linguistics to provide a wide-ranging, far-reaching, and fascinating examination of the multiple layers of “common knowledge.”

In its various iterations, ranging from shared information about intentions and actions among family members, friends, and fellow workers to common knowledge in neighborhoods, reli

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