A review by fatamo
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer
4.0
I can imagine that it would be hard to write a book about memory, memorizing and people who like to memorize things. I never knew there was this whole community of memory champions, gurus and grand masters - there's something almost fantastical about them!
The people he meets along the way are fascinating to me, and I can imagine reading a book about any one of them... It's actually a bit of a freaky coincidence that one of the 'case studies' mentioned in this book is the Russian man known as 'S', who had the scarily photographic memory and that condition where you mix up your senses (I've actually forgotten the phrase used to describe it - doh). When I was a kid, I used to leaf through my aunt's psychology books (I was a bit of an odd child) and read about S and how, in one instance for example, he would see a woman in the street selling food or something and would 'see' her voice as black smoke crawling out of her mouth, and many other instances of this mixing of the senses - I was always fascinated by this man, and over the years have asked many people if they ever heard of this story. I love that S is featured in this book and I got to learn more about him... Even though I've apparently forgotten some of it already.
I initially got this book because I figured it would also teach me how to have a better memory. I don't know why I thought it would be some kind of manual, but in any case I'm glad it wasn't, because that would be quite boring. I also marvel at Foer's dedication in truly immersing himself in this task - he's a bit self-deprecating, but he's got to be a pretty intelligent person from the looks of it.
I learned a lot from this book, and at the same time he was entertaining, funny and insightful. I am definitely going to be using this memory palace technique to see how it works for me.
The people he meets along the way are fascinating to me, and I can imagine reading a book about any one of them... It's actually a bit of a freaky coincidence that one of the 'case studies' mentioned in this book is the Russian man known as 'S', who had the scarily photographic memory and that condition where you mix up your senses (I've actually forgotten the phrase used to describe it - doh). When I was a kid, I used to leaf through my aunt's psychology books (I was a bit of an odd child) and read about S and how, in one instance for example, he would see a woman in the street selling food or something and would 'see' her voice as black smoke crawling out of her mouth, and many other instances of this mixing of the senses - I was always fascinated by this man, and over the years have asked many people if they ever heard of this story. I love that S is featured in this book and I got to learn more about him... Even though I've apparently forgotten some of it already.
I initially got this book because I figured it would also teach me how to have a better memory. I don't know why I thought it would be some kind of manual, but in any case I'm glad it wasn't, because that would be quite boring. I also marvel at Foer's dedication in truly immersing himself in this task - he's a bit self-deprecating, but he's got to be a pretty intelligent person from the looks of it.
I learned a lot from this book, and at the same time he was entertaining, funny and insightful. I am definitely going to be using this memory palace technique to see how it works for me.