The book review column in Artificial Intelligence has evolved from simple reviews to a forum where reviewers and authors debate in essays, even tutorial presentations, the latest, often competing, theories of human and artificial intelligence. Contemplating Minds brings together a selection of these reviews in a form suitable for the general scientific reader, seminar organizer, or student wanting a critical introduction that synthesizes and compares some of the most important and influential books and ideas to have emerged in AI over the past decade.Contemplating Minds is divided into four parts, each with a brief introduction, that address the major themes in artificial intelligence, human intelligence, and cognitive science research: Symbolic Models of Mind, Situated Action, Architectures of Interaction, and Memory and Consciousness.The books being debated include those by such influential authors as Allen Newell (Unified Theories of Cognition), Terry Winograd and F. Flores (Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design), Herbert Simon (The Sciences of the Artificial, second edition), Lucy Suchman (Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication), Marvin Minsky (The Society of Mind), Gerald Edelman (Neural Darwinism: The Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind), and Daniel Dennett (Consciousness Explained). The list of reviewers is equally distinguished.