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Moonwalking with Einstein
Joshua Foer
The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
Penguin Press
March 2011
On Sale: March 3, 2011
320 pages
ISBN: 159420229X
EAN: 9781594202292
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
Foer's unlikely journey from chronically forgetful science
journalist to U.S. Memory Champion frames a revelatory
exploration of the vast, hidden impact of memory on every
aspect of our lives. On average, people squander forty days annually compensating
for things they've forgotten. Joshua Foer used to be one of
those people. But after a year of memory training, he found
himself in the finals of the U.S. Memory Championship. Even
more important, Foer found a vital truth we too often
forget: In every way that matters, we are the sum of our
memories. Moonwalking with Einstein draws on cutting-edge research, a
surprising cultural history of memory, and venerable tricks
of the mentalist's trade to transform our understanding of
human remembering. Under the tutelage of top "mental
athletes," he learns ancient techniques once employed by
Cicero to memorize his speeches and by Medieval scholars to
memorize entire books. Using methods that have been largely
forgotten, Foer discovers that we can all dramatically
improve our memories. Immersing himself obsessively in a quirky subculture of
competitive memorizers, Foer learns to apply techniques that
call on imagination as much as determination-showing that
memorization can be anything but rote. From the PAO system,
which converts numbers into lurid images, to the memory
palace, in which memories are stored in the rooms of
imaginary structures, Foer's experience shows that the World
Memory Championships are less a test of memory than of
perseverance and creativity. Foer takes his inquiry well beyond the arena of mental
athletes-across the country and deep into his own mind. In
San Diego, he meets an affable old man with one of the most
severe case of amnesia on record, where he learns that
memory is at once more elusive and more reliable than we
might think. In Salt Lake City, he swaps secrets with a
savant who claims to have memorized more than nine thousand
books. At a high school in the South Bronx, he finds a
history teacher using twenty- five-hundred-year-old memory
techniques to give his students an edge in the state Regents
exam. At a time when electronic devices have all but rendered our
individual memories obsolete, Foer's bid to resurrect the
forgotten art of remembering becomes an urgent quest.
Moonwalking with Einstein brings Joshua Foer to the apex of
the U.S. Memory Championship and readers to a profound
appreciation of a gift we all possess but that too often
slips our minds.
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