Since its inception in 1981, inflation has emerged as the dominant paradigm for describing the physics of the early universe. While inflation has matured theoretically over two decades, it has only recently begun to be rigorously tested observationally. Measurements of the cosmic microwave background and large-scale structure surveys have begun to unravel the mysteries of the inflationary epoch with exquisite and unprecedented accuracy. This work is a contribution to the effort of reconstructing the physics of inflation. This information is largely encoded in the potential energy function of...