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eastcoastobrien's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
5.0
ekenney16's review against another edition
5.0
Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein is an extremely interesting and powerful look at the human capacity for both memory and expertise in general. What began as a journalistic experiment in improving his average memory led Foer to spend a year mastering memory techniques from both modern times and Cicero’s age; at the end of the year, he attended the U.S. Memory Championship… and won. From this engagingly well-written read, I learned how to improve my memory (if I so desired), that I actually can, as a human born with regular intelligence, become a memory champion (if I so desired), and that Foer’s philosophy on what remembering really is can be applied in my daily life. And what I truly took away from his book was not anything related to memory, but instead related to mindfulness, determination, and breaking past the “OK plateau”. Don’t know what that is? Well, you haven’t read the book then, have you? Or maybe you have… and you’ve forgotten.
gardner98's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
3.0
Really interesting book about memory and mental athletes. Mental athletes are people who train to be able to memorize large volumes of information quickly. With this skill they then compete. This book pulls back the curtain about the secrets of that type of memorization.
The book lost points because the author comes off poorly in certain sentence deliveries.
The book lost points because the author comes off poorly in certain sentence deliveries.
tylerkirkbride1's review against another edition
inspiring
fast-paced
4.0
It was a good read, I think the author wasted a few chapters going into things that didn't add to the story. Overall a good read and really interesting.
kfont42's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
3.0
The book wasn’t what I expected. It was very slow. I thought it would be an exploration of memory and techniques for improving memory, but it’s more recounting the author’s training to compete in a memory competition, with some interesting stories scattered in between boring practice session summaries. Maybe that’s my fault for not reading the description carefully, but this was very nearly a DNF for me.
gchuan's review against another edition
funny
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
I came across this book when hearing how in Ancient Greece there was this book on memorization techniques and that in school, memory was just as fundamental as reading, mathematics, grammar, etc. That intrigued me because I’ve noticed how my own memory has changed and (to be honest) sort of deteriorated throughout my life. Of course not to the point of it being dysfunctional or a sign for medical attention. But of course it can be frustrating and embarrassing when I forget someone’s name or unable to recall where I left something. I always thought it was simply an unavoidable situation or not something I can deliberately change. Furthermore, what would be the incentive given all the technological tools I have at my disposal. Reading this book taught me that memory can be improved and worked upon. Having an impressive memory does not require being born a genius or prodigy either. Lastly, I also noticed the role of my inadequate memory when learning new concepts in class as a graduate student. Reflecting back on my undergraduate studies I also noticed how challenging it was to connect the dots of what I learned there as well. Given this context, I always seen a connection between memory and learning/understanding which I found very fascinating. This book cited that ancient memory theory has been incorporated in this idea called mind mapping which is a way to write notes. Given this and how it lines up with my own experience, I do believe memory is core to how we perceive, learn, and understand things.
lina_bouslimani's review against another edition
4.0
The big stellar idea in this book is something like: your memory has mythical capacities which would enable you to memorize virtually anything, regardless of its size or nature.
Subversive as it is, the idea with the ambiguous claim have left me—alone with the author himself— with a familiar incredulity. Suggesting further that memory is in in a fact an inseparable partition of intelligence, and defying the conventional wisdom even still by linking creativity to having a prior good memory inventory.
“In our gross misunderstanding of the function of memory, we though that memory was operated primarily by rote. In other words, you rammed it in until your head was stuffed with facts. What was not realized is that memory is primarily an imaginative process. In fact, learning, memory, and creativity are the same fundamental process directed with a different focus,” says Buzan. “The art and science of memory is about developing the capacity to quickly create images that link disparate ideas. Creativity is the ability to form similar connections between disparate images and to create something new and hurl it into the future so it becomes a poem, or a building, or a dance, or a novel. Creativity is, in a sense, future memory.” If the essence of creativity is linking disparate facts and ideas, then the more facility you have making associations, and the more facts and ideas you have at your disposal, the better you’ll be at coming up with new ideas.”
“Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, was the mother of the Muses.”
While investigating this engrossed claim, Foer (like the other interviewees in the book) did a historical research on Roman and Greek mnemonics on whose techniques was based this memory frenzy, he met with memory champions and gurus like Tony Buzan, under which influences he decided to embark on a journey of self-experiment. Foer then trained for a year, then won the US memory championship.
Like Gladwell in Outliers and Coyle in the talent code, Foer met the infamous neuroscientist Ericson: the expert on experts, in order to trace his progress and make a “contribution to science” at his own words. And thus some of the ideas in this “autobiography” were blissfully familiar to me, in a matter of not repetition nor already-used concepts, but in the different interpretation of those.
The epilogue was a confirmation of sort, to the popular studies extensively repeated in neuroscience, so it struck me as something I read before about talent, success, brain super powers…
It was made clear by the author that this book wasn't a self-help book, but rather more like an autobiography. I am not fully convinced of those grandiose claims, but being a sucker for brain fanatics I very much enjoyed them.
Indeed those claims can come off as exaggeration and even maybe as deceiving, but what I like the most about these books, is not the over-used ideas concluded from research studies, nor the Eureka moments, but the journey itself, the journey or the adventure of starting off to get somewhere promised, and realizing you’ve got way more than you were hoping to get, and now you’re a different person because you know more.
Subversive as it is, the idea with the ambiguous claim have left me—alone with the author himself— with a familiar incredulity. Suggesting further that memory is in in a fact an inseparable partition of intelligence, and defying the conventional wisdom even still by linking creativity to having a prior good memory inventory.
“In our gross misunderstanding of the function of memory, we though that memory was operated primarily by rote. In other words, you rammed it in until your head was stuffed with facts. What was not realized is that memory is primarily an imaginative process. In fact, learning, memory, and creativity are the same fundamental process directed with a different focus,” says Buzan. “The art and science of memory is about developing the capacity to quickly create images that link disparate ideas. Creativity is the ability to form similar connections between disparate images and to create something new and hurl it into the future so it becomes a poem, or a building, or a dance, or a novel. Creativity is, in a sense, future memory.” If the essence of creativity is linking disparate facts and ideas, then the more facility you have making associations, and the more facts and ideas you have at your disposal, the better you’ll be at coming up with new ideas.”
“Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, was the mother of the Muses.”
While investigating this engrossed claim, Foer (like the other interviewees in the book) did a historical research on Roman and Greek mnemonics on whose techniques was based this memory frenzy, he met with memory champions and gurus like Tony Buzan, under which influences he decided to embark on a journey of self-experiment. Foer then trained for a year, then won the US memory championship.
Like Gladwell in Outliers and Coyle in the talent code, Foer met the infamous neuroscientist Ericson: the expert on experts, in order to trace his progress and make a “contribution to science” at his own words. And thus some of the ideas in this “autobiography” were blissfully familiar to me, in a matter of not repetition nor already-used concepts, but in the different interpretation of those.
The epilogue was a confirmation of sort, to the popular studies extensively repeated in neuroscience, so it struck me as something I read before about talent, success, brain super powers…
It was made clear by the author that this book wasn't a self-help book, but rather more like an autobiography. I am not fully convinced of those grandiose claims, but being a sucker for brain fanatics I very much enjoyed them.
Indeed those claims can come off as exaggeration and even maybe as deceiving, but what I like the most about these books, is not the over-used ideas concluded from research studies, nor the Eureka moments, but the journey itself, the journey or the adventure of starting off to get somewhere promised, and realizing you’ve got way more than you were hoping to get, and now you’re a different person because you know more.
deborah_tus's review against another edition
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
medium-paced
5.0