Last year, my then 18 year old son recommended this book to me. He'd learned about memory techniques when enrolled with CollegePlus! and it had fascinated him. Somehow he stumbled onto this book and enjoyed it so much, he raved about it. So I put it in my to read pile and finally got down to it a couple weeks ago.
Moonwalking with Einstein; The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer is a very interesting and entertaining read. Foer was a young 25 year old journalist, living in his parents' basement trying to forge a career. He got himself assigned to cover the U.S. Memory Championship up in New York and was thus introduced to the crazy, geeky, and at times, hysterically funny world of competitive memorizing.
Not only does Foer do a wonderful job of explaining what memory has meant to mankind through the ages, he goes into the world of science and how memory is studied and analyzed by neurologists and psychologists. I found the part at end of the book about 'idiot savants' extremely interesting. But Foer does more than just report, he actually spends the year training to compete in the U.S. Memory Championship and he volunteers to be a guinea pig for a scientist at the University of Florida who is studying memory.
Foer is a classy, smart, talented guy. I liked him and thoroughly enjoyed spending the year with him as he trained and explored the idea of memory. One caution: in order to memorize things quickly, the memorizer is encouraged to think up memorable images; and what makes images memorable is often lurid or shocking. Foer usually doesn't go into too much detail but occasionally I really would rather NOT have been let in on some of his images. But to tell the truth they were often amusing as well as disgusting.
So two thumbs up for Moonwalking with Einstein!
Go to 52 Books in 52 Weeks for more reviews.
No comments:
Post a Comment