The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, light from the early universe, contains a wealth of information about the state of the Observable Universe just after the big bang. In particular, there is overwhelming observational evidence that at the time the CMB was formed the Universe was nearly homogeneous and isotropic, with small adiabatic fluctuations in density whose statistics are gaussian and nearly scale-invariant. The theory of cosmic inflation, a postulated epoch of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe, provides a causal explanation for these features of our Observable Universe. In this talk, I will first give a pedagogical overview of inflation and describe the current state of observational constraints. I will conclude with a discussion of searches for spatially localized features in the CMB, which may yield clues about how inflation began.