Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

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Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

by Joshua Foer (Goodreads Author)

3.79 of 5 stars 3.79 · rating details · 20,501 ratings · 2,130 reviews

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...more 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.(less)

Hardcover, 320 pages

Published March 3rd 2011 by Penguin Press HC, The (first published January 1st 2011)

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May 24, 2013 Stephanie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, non-fiction, brain

Cross posted atShelfinflicted

People do the oddest things in the name of winning.

I’m a competitive person (as are most of you reviewers out there). A few years ago I would have added the word “very” in front of competitive; I’ve mellowed as I’ve aged but I remember the lengths I went to in order to be the best at whatever I deemed important. But I’m fairly certain I would not go to such lengths to win a memory competition.

Joshua Foer thought it was a dandy idea…..

Joshua found himself in the worl...more Cross posted atShelfinflicted

People do the oddest things in the name of winning.

I’m a competitive person (as are most of you reviewers out there). A few years ago I would have added the word “very” in front of competitive; I’ve mellowed as I’ve aged but I remember the lengths I went to in order to be the best at whatever I deemed important. But I’m fairly certain I would not go to such lengths to win a memory competition.

Joshua Foer thought it was a dandy idea…..

Joshua found himself in the world of competitive memory when he decided he wanted to do a journalistic book about the subject and the people in it. Apparently, and I didn’t know this, there is a world competition for memory. These people memorize long lists of numbers, decks on top of decks of cards, poetry….ect, all to repeat what they remember to some judges in hopes of winning. My question was why? What purpose could this possibly serve? Who needs a skill like this and when would one have the need to memorize 20 decks of cards?

As the author points out in the book, we no longer need to remember much of anything these days, all our electronic gadgets serve as our external memory. When was the last time you memorized a phone number? Pretty close to “a really flippin long time ago” I would guess.

To accomplish the mind boggling feet of, say, memorizing the order of cards in many set of cards in just minutes, they use the technique called mnemonics. What this is, is making a visual backdrop for each card, or number, or object and putting them in ‘memorable’ situations doing strange things……and apparently the raunchier the better. Trust me you don’t want to know what his mind had conjured up for Bill Clinton and a Watermelon, but I will never forget it.

Competition got the better of Foer, and he went from writing a book about memory competitors to being a competitor himself. He wanted the American memory championship bad! So bad he resorted to wearing blacked out goggles with small holes in them to see whatever he studying and to wearing earmuffs to minimize distractions. That's dedication.
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Sep 21, 2011 Angie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: kindle-clubbers, recommended-non-fiction

Joshua Foer begins exploring memory at the US Memory Competition, where he watches people who claim to have normal memory capacity memorize lists of phone numbers, the order of decks of cards, and poems in mere minutes. Intrigued, he eventually decides to compete in the competition himself and receives help from leaders in memory techniques along the way.

Foer weaves his experience in memory training with research and a history of the practice. With a casual, story-telling style he takes you on a...more

21 likes · like · see review

Aug 02, 2012 Robert Delikat rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction

I just realized that my last three books had to do with memory: Remembrance of Things Past, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Moonwalking with Einstein (MwE). It was certainly not intentional and the Proust was not really about memory per se, only the title suggests that. But MwE is all about memory.

If you are looking for a self-help book on improving your memory, you might wish to look elsewhere, perhaps something by Tony Buzan who is a very important character in MwE. This is not to...more I just realized that my last three books had to do with memory: Remembrance of Things Past, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Moonwalking with Einstein (MwE). It was certainly not intentional and the Proust was not really about memory per se, only the title suggests that. But MwE is all about memory.

If you are looking for a self-help book on improving your memory, you might wish to look elsewhere, perhaps something by Tony Buzan who is a very important character in MwE. This is not to suggest that the author does not elucidate many of the techniques used by MAs or Mental Athletes as the memory champions of the world are called. One might think that the individuals who compete at the national and international memory competitions are mentally-gifted or Savants. Not so. In fact, by definition, Savantism, as described in the literature, is that rare condition that, among other aspects of the syndrome, has as a commonality among its holders a prodigious memory that while very deep, is also exceedingly narrow. MAs on the other hand have memories that can, to name only a few, manage and regurgitate ordered lists of hundreds of random numbers, orders of multiple, shuffled decks of cards, poetry never before seen and all in a matter of a few short minutes. While these are but a few examples of the feats these athletes are capable of performing, there really are no limits to the subject materials they are capable of memorizing. And, as in the case of other forms of athletics, these require a similar kind and degree of training and conditioning.

In my studies as an educator, we learned theories about the kinds of student learning that takes place within us and particularly two and the one of which most of us have a particular proclivity for. We, for example, were taught that there are visual- and there are auditory-learners. I did not totally buy into that division and later on came to believe that even auditory learners, upon ‘hearing” the words, translate them into pictures, “seeing” them within their brains and therefore making us all pretty much visual. This is the premise upon which the techniques employed by MAs such as The Memory Palace derive their inspiration. Much to its credit, this is not only a book about the personal stories of some of the most important contemporary memory champs alive today, it is also about how they accomplish their stunning and almost magical feats of mental acumen.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is that its author. 20-something and fledgling author, Joshua Foer, in the process of writing a piece for Discovery Magazine on the U.S. Memory Championships, is convinced to train himself for the competition. He, with no particularly high IQ or Savantist syndrome whatever, does just that and goes on to win. While it gives hope for us mortals on the one hand, the book goes on to describe the incredibly intense training that goes into accomplishing such a feat.

Writing for Discovery, this is not a schlock, tabloid-like look at the subject of memory. Much of what is outlined is taken from cutting-edge research in the fields of psychology and neuroscience. I felt that the book was very well written, easy to understand, edifying and enjoyable. I think that I came to better understand and appreciate how much memory actually defines just who we are... and not necessarily who we are to others, but who we are to ourselves. The book was very well narrated and was everything a book should be and I give it five stars all the way around.(less)

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Mar 18, 2012 oriana is currently reading it · review of another edition

Well, I'm not going to lie, this book has already got two strikes: I basically hate the genre of "I tried to do this wacky thing, and look, I wrote a book about it!", plus he is the brother of a famouser writer whom I more or less revile. But! OMG you guys, my memory is so laughably bad. And apparently this book might possibly have a side effect of helping me improve that, which would be worth slogging through a middling memoir.

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Mar 20, 2011 Grumpus rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Arminius

Shelves: audiobook, miscellaneous

I love his style of writing...fun and chatty. Nice introductory chapters and a technique I learned while listening on the train (for half an hour) that allowed me to come home and impress my kids by having them write down a 50-digit number and then me recalling it digit-by-digit in order for them.

I never thought about it before, but the book points out that before pen and paper, anything that needed to be preserved had to be memorized. That is why so many of the techniques mentioned in the book...more

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Jul 16, 2012 sanshow rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fun, technique, non-fiction, cover-con

A light, fun read, albeit a little too 'normal' to be memorable.

Tells the experiences of a journalist who, in the process of researching on a memory championship event, delved head-first into the world of mnemonics.

Several simple techniques were introduced, and it does seem as if anyone is capable of becoming mnemonic experts with enough sustained practice. The case of someone who kept forgetting things the moment they happened (like in the movie Memento), along with the recent reports of Gabrie...more

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Mar 10, 2011 J rated it 1 of 5 stars

Unimpressive - This is a great example of how misleading a book title can be. I'd give it one and a half stars but it is just not worth two.

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art & Science of Remembering Everything reads like a long magazine article - which is kind of where I found out about the book - The NY Times - last week. Having read the article, I was sufficiently impressed to get online and order the book. It arrived four days later and I couldn't wait to get started.

At the onset of his...more Unimpressive - This is a great example of how misleading a book title can be. I'd give it one and a half stars but it is just not worth two.

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art & Science of Remembering Everything reads like a long magazine article - which is kind of where I found out about the book - The NY Times - last week. Having read the article, I was sufficiently impressed to get online and order the book. It arrived four days later and I couldn't wait to get started.

At the onset of his book - which does have a snappy title - Foer was very clear this is not a 'how to' book but rather, it is an account of his one-year journey from being a journalist-spectator to becoming winner of the US Memory Championship. Maybe that's where I got off track. The NY Times article, detailed as it was, failed to mention that part. Its a critical detail - more than an oversight - in my estimation.

Foer has a decent writing style - again, like a magazine article. This book is written in the vein of Malcolm Gladwell's books and it does have information but not quite as polished or as jam packed. So far, hardly anything that wasn't already mentioned on the NY Times synopsis has been written and little has been added to what I already read so I am feeling just a little bit ripped off - the subtitle seems to imply that the book will talk about, "the art and science of remembering everything..." For the sake of accuracy, it should read; "My year-long journey toward becoming the US Memory champion with a few interesting tidbits about memory thrown in for good measure."

I'd give this book a grade of "B+" for style and an overall grade of "D" because it was not at all what it was hyped to be. The discontinuity between Foer's book title and its content are such that if I ever come across this writer's books again, I am going to be hard-pressed to trust him enough to plop down my hard-earned money because I will be less likely to fall for that trick twice.

Foer's synopsis on the NY Times deserves an "A" - moreover, since he failed to expand the book that's where the material should have stayed.

I am going to be recommending the NY Times synopsis - penned by the author and - which turns out to be $14.00 + shipping cheaper - not to mention, the article is (ironically) more directed at hard examples of just how memory techniques can be applied. I suppose if there is anything redeeming about Foer's book is its extensive bibliography.

Other than that, save your money and check this book out at your local library where you can also photocopy the bibliography because it will offer more detail germane to the topic.(less)

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Mar 18, 2012 Andrea rated it 4 of 5 stars

I started this one with somewhat lowered expectations, feeling like I was revisiting too-familiar territory. Being the clever woman I am, I had diagnosed a trend of immersive journalism about "brain sports" (I just made that term up), profiling the odd sort of people that tend to become obsessive about such things, and learning how to become obsessive oneself. And having spotted this trend, I was (of course) subsequently dismissive, skeptical that this book about memory competition would enterta...more

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Jun 01, 2012 Teresa Lukey rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: i-learned-something, made-me-feel-good, non-fiction, 4-stars

This is a really cool read. The author, Joshua Foer, is a journalist who has previously covered the Memory Championships. He decides to delve deeper in to the mind and its memory by immersing himself, a man with an average memory, in to memorization techniques.

Josh starts with a memory palace, which is a familiar place that you place objects in order to remind you of whatever it is you trying and remember. I remember learning in Psychology class, that in order to adequately remember anything you...more

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Apr 01, 2011 Arminius rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science

If you are solely looking for the secrets to memorization to be found in this book then you will be disappointed. However if you are interested in a journalist doing a story about people who compete in Mnemonic competitions you will like this story. The author does a story on people with supposedly super memories and becomes obsessed with their secrets. So he befriends a mnemonic competitor who teaches him the tricks while he is also interviewing the stars of the sport.
Once he learns the tricks...more

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Jul 15, 2011 Richard Stephenson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Let me see if I have this right... pickled garlic, cottage cheese, Pete's Smoked Salmon, 6 bottles of champagne, 3 pairs of socks, hoola hoops, scuba diver in the sink, dry ice, send Sophia an email... I think I messed it up, but there's some simple proof that memory techniques *can* be useful.

Unfortunately, this book isn't about teaching memory techniques. It's about Josh's journey to winning the biggest little award in the US... which is NOT why I read this book.

Sure, the overall story was int...more

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Nov 11, 2011 Jim rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobooks-read, bill-gates-book-club

One more disk to listen to but I can safely review it now.

I listened to this as a flier thinking it to be a how to on Mnemonics. It's more of a participatory journalism book like the Omnivores Dilemma, The Wave, Born to Run and Word Freak. These books share a common formula. 1 Part History,1 Part Science, 1 Part Interview with Characters, 1 Part How to, 1 Part Essay and 1 Part Personal Quest: training and competing in the America Memory Championship which he entered on a lark.

I found it to be w...more

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Jun 19, 2011 Andrew Kahn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Fellow GoodReader Adrian recommended this to me and I read it fairly quickly. Foer is a journalist who, after covering the U.S. Memory Championships (yes, there is such a thing), decides to train to be a “mental athlete.” After about a year of training, he enters the following year’s competition and wins! He uses ancient techniques taught to him by European memory competitors (the U.S. lags far behind in this competition, routinely finishing near the bottom of the standings in the international...more

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Jun 15, 2011 ms.petra rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Joshua Foer comes from a very successful family and seems to be trying to find his niche. This experiment in participatory journalism had its ups and downs. I never knew there was a memory championship and a mnemonics underground. But, frankly, I found some of it downright boring. Also, it seemed to be a rip-off of AJ Jacobs or Morgan Spurlock except this topic was just not presented in as engaging a way. Some of his discussions reminded me of making up cheers out of history facts to help my dau...more

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Feb 22, 2013 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

I found that the overall narrative of this book made the subject matter very accessable. The author is not an expert or a medical professional, there wasn't a lot of jargon to dry things out, yet it was still well informed. It's just about a normal person learning how to do freakish things with his memory among a cast of unlikely characters.

It's funny, it's very honest and what is more, the Memory Palace works. I can now memorise a deck of cards in 15 minutes (need to work on my times!), and it...more

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Jul 24, 2012 Robyn rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-format, non-fiction

Not so impressed. I learned a lot about the eccentrics who engage in memory challenges, but didn't really learn how to memorize better. He talked a lot about "memory palaces" but it wasn't clear to me how to create these. It's a great party trick to memorize a stack of cards and yes, even admirable, but not useful. Even at the end, the author admits he still forgets the practical things, like where he parked his car - or if he even had his car with him. So what's the point? Maybe I did learn wha...more

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May 12, 2013 Leon marked it as to-read · review of another edition

...more

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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Jun 12, 2013 Christoph rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

While listening to the audiobook for Moonwalking with Einstein, both intently and admittedly in some sections with less than half an ear, I conjured some vivid and truly groundbreaking insights on thought, memory, and the brain. As I sit here trying to recall those ideas that I remember thinking, I realize I have no clue what they are now. But I know for certain I had these good ideas, at one point I even thought, I should write this down because it was a really good point about my very own memo...more While listening to the audiobook for Moonwalking with Einstein, both intently and admittedly in some sections with less than half an ear, I conjured some vivid and truly groundbreaking insights on thought, memory, and the brain. As I sit here trying to recall those ideas that I remember thinking, I realize I have no clue what they are now. But I know for certain I had these good ideas, at one point I even thought, I should write this down because it was a really good point about my very own memory palace I would construct if I were to try some of the techniques described in this book. Alas, knowing I thought amazing thoughts and remembering what those amazing thoughts were are two very different things. This is the heart of the matter to what Mr. Foer (I would pronounce it FOW-ER) is getting at in Moonwalking with Einstein.

This book is pretty brilliantly crafted as an interesting mix of journalism, history, philosophy, science, and even a bit of mystery. The backbone of the book is the author's story on breaking into the World Memory Championship by learning all he can about the strange world of memory enhancement. He trains under one of the top memory athletes, if I may use the term liberally, and along the way learns of the highly competitive if not blase group of individuals who attempt this game of memorizing random numbers, decks of cards, lines of poetry, random individuals names and numbers, etc. While this story unfolds, Mr. Foer probes the question of what memory is, why we have it, how its changed throughout history asking some fairly intriguing questions along the way.

Regardless, for as crafty as the book is, and despite tacking some fairly abstract notion, at the end of the day is essentially a pop, non-fiction book which usually doesn't impress me too much. The fact this book is rated where it is says a lot about Mr. Foer's writing ability (I really wish I could give a half star more on this one, because it definitely deserves it). But bottom line is if you are geek/nerd who likes popsci books with a social edge, you will love this book to the very end.(less)

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Jun 06, 2013 Carol Ryan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Without memory who are we? Ubiquitous cameras that seem to be recording our every experience along with the low cost of external memory storage combine to promise and threaten our memories. What does that really mean to our fundamental concept of self?
Joshua Foer provides facts and ideas with which to approach these questions in his fascinating and informative book, Moonwalking With Einstein. It is a nonfiction book written like a novel. While reading about true-life characters wacky enough to b...more

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Jun 04, 2013 A. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: psychology, social-sciences, autobiographical

This book is catchy, no doubt about it. Fair warning, though, it's got a lot of language that will be outright offensive to anyone familiar with social justice or disability rights. Still, it's full of fascinating information and well-paced.

When journalist Foer runs across the phenomenon of memory contests, he goes from intrigued bystander to participant, eventually becoming the U.S. champion and demonstrating that anyone can learn amazing memory tricks.

His discussion balances a light overview o...more

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Jun 04, 2013 Valerie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Have you ever gone to the grocery store without your shopping list and realized you cannot remember what you needed to get? It’s pretty common to forget simple things like that.
Now, picture your best friend growing up. Try to picture his or her house. Pretty easy, isn’t it? Why is it that we can’t remember what we had to eat two nights ago, be we can remember the layout of a house we haven’t seen for 20 or more years? Maybe our memories aren’t as poor as we thought.
In Moonwalking with Einstein,...more

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May 23, 2013 Afrah Mohammad rated it 4 of 5 stars

OK, I guess what I think of this book depends on what I expect of it. Do I expect an amusing story? A journalistic account? A book about neuroscience/psychology? It's kind of an amalgamation of these things, but above all I was expecting a story. So for that I give it a 4, because Foer did a really good job telling a story. The subject matter is interesting enough, but his background as a journalist was apparent in his quirky, organic language, comprehensive use of disparate secondary and primar...more

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Apr 21, 2013 Emily rated it 5 of 5 stars

I picked this up fairly randomly via Audible but was fascinated within the first chapter. The author, a journalist, covers the U.S. memory competition and becomes interested in how the "memory athletes" actually do their amazing feats of memory, since studies have found that the people who win these events are neither smarter not more successful in their careers than anybody else.. This line of questioning leads him into the world of professional memory competition and along the way he examines...more

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Apr 03, 2013 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Both entertaining and educational, this was a good story about the author's progression in memory skills and success in the US memory championships combined with a ton of great information about memory, how we learn, how to improve it, etc. Our strongest memories are linked to physical locations, thus memory competitiors use "memory palaces" (places they know well) and link them to the things to remember - the stranger, funnier or more sexual the better to recall. This also explains how when Nat...more Both entertaining and educational, this was a good story about the author's progression in memory skills and success in the US memory championships combined with a ton of great information about memory, how we learn, how to improve it, etc. Our strongest memories are linked to physical locations, thus memory competitiors use "memory palaces" (places they know well) and link them to the things to remember - the stranger, funnier or more sexual the better to recall. This also explains how when Native Americans had their land taken from them, they lost their home and their history & mythology, as it was intimately connected to place.
Humans can only remember ~7 things at a time in our short term working memory. We must learn other techniques to improve recall, and that the brain adapts, and even grows, to meet the demands we are putting on it. Author describes "chicken-sexers" and London cab drivers as examples of populations who need to take on vast knowledge, which physically alters the gross structure of their brains (aspiring London cabbies take 2-4 yrs driving and memorizing all 25k streets and 1400 landmarks before they can take the test, which has a 30% pass rate!)
The "history of memory" starts with Simonides in 5th-century BC Greece, then is traced through the first written history, notably the change in reading and remembering after the printing press was invented in 1440 in Gutenberg. Dominican Friar Giordano Bruno believed memory was key to spiritual enlightnement and authored a new system - which used complicated and strange images to bundle memories. He was prosecuted as part of the Inquisition and burned at the stake.
I commend the author for taking a chapter to examine the utility of memory. His conclusion, "Memory is like a spiderweb that catches new information. The more it catches, the bigger it grows; and the bigger it grows, the more it catches. The more we remember, the better we are at processing the world."
One last point of interest - the notion that many people have that time seems to "speed up" as we age may have a lot to do with making fewer memories. It is essential to keep having new experiences to counteract this feeling - and to be more fulfilled generally.(less)

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Mar 30, 2013 Nathan rated it 4 of 5 stars

AWESOME! I'd always wondered how those clever buggers managed to remember the order of cards in four shuffled decks. I have a crappo memory: I forget names and faces, and I prefer to only have one thing to do at a time. I'm notorious in our house for starting something and then leaving it, forgetting the stove is on or the washing machine is filling.

This book traces the memory wizards who show off their prodigious memories at contests. It gives a glimpse of that curious life, the odd folks who d...more

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Mar 23, 2013 Bill Leach rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: informative

I just read "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Joshua Foer. It is about his study of memorization techniques and his participation in the U.S. Memory Championship.

The primary topic is the methods used to remember lists. The methods are primarily based on creating images and associating them with locations that are associated with a real or imagined path through a building. It seems the brain is much better at remembering images and spatial data than straight names and numbers. The approach takes rea...more

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Mar 23, 2013 Sam Drew rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

'Moonwalking with Einstein' is a great bit of participatory journalism, and a nice introduction to memory training. You can read it without feeling like you're reading a self-help book, but you still come away with a good idea of the basic techniques and ideas such as the memory palace and the major and PAO (person-action-object) systems for learning numbers.

It's also nicely candid about where memory training falls down: after winning the USA memory championship and going out for a celebratory...more

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Mar 21, 2013 Dawn Peers rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: amazon-vine-reviews

"Fluent interesting writing and an easy read"

This is not a self help book (which is sneakily inserted in to the text at around page 15).

That being said, the style of it doesn't set out as a self help book so any aware reader should have clocked on to this in the early pages.

Foer, who is embarking on training his memory after covering the Memory Championships as a journalist, decides to document his year of learning. Foer has a relaxed writing style which makes a potentially dry subject remarkabl...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Ernest rated it 4 of 5 stars

The downside of the history of technology is that it goes hand in hand with the atrophying of human capabilities as they are turned over to machines that do them much better. Nowhere is this truer than in the realm of memory. When the Greeks started writing down what had been oral histories somewhere about 2500 years ago, they started a trip down the slippery slope to our current state of affairs, where anyone who can actually remember the names of someone they met at a party is considered a unu...more The downside of the history of technology is that it goes hand in hand with the atrophying of human capabilities as they are turned over to machines that do them much better. Nowhere is this truer than in the realm of memory. When the Greeks started writing down what had been oral histories somewhere about 2500 years ago, they started a trip down the slippery slope to our current state of affairs, where anyone who can actually remember the names of someone they met at a party is considered a unusual, and anyone who has actually committed, say, poetry, to memory runs the risk of being considered a savant.
There’s no question about whether memory techniques work; the fact that I could remember author Joshua Foer’s name is proof enough for me, since I’m always grasping after authors names.

The truth is that there’s nothing wrong with our memories, as we discover in Moonwalking with Einstein, nothing that a little practice and a few tricks couldn’t fix.

In 2005 Josh Foer (picture a comedian [a man joshing] standing in an open doorway [a foyer]) was starting out as a science writer and living in his parent’s basement, when he went to watch the U.S.A. Memory Championship, and write an article about it. A year later, (spoiler alert) he came back to win the title. Moonwalking With Einstein is everything in between; a walk down memory science lane and a tour of the tricks and techniques that turn an average mind into a steel trap from which no fact can escape. Even if those fact are the precise order of cards in multiple packs, glimpsed for a fraction of a second apiece.

Although Josh puts down how he did it in clear terms, you won’t find this to be a self-help manual that enables you to rush out and start memorizing license plate numbers or answers for your final exam. Actually, there’s enough information in the book for you to do that, but it’s not the point of the book, as the author makes clear from the start.

Rather, Moonwalking with Einstein is a historical and scientific tour of the “art of memory,” whose origins are generally considered to rest with Simonides of Ceos, a Greek poet who lived around 550 B.C. and who narrowly missed being killed in the collapse of a dining hall he had just spoken in. By recreating the scene in his mind he was able to point out the location of each person lying beneath the rubble, a feat that spurred him to create the system of mnemonics that underlies the abilities of classical scholars and contemporary mental athletes alike.

full review at: http://www.e357.net/beingernest/?p=2925 (less)

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Feb 14, 2013 Spencer rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobook, other-science-current-affairs-etc

This book tells the very interesting story of how the author went from being a serendipitous spectator at the US National Memory Championship one year, to becoming fully immersed in training in the art of memorization to learn more about it, to competing (and winning!) the championship the following year. His winning performance included setting a US record for memorizing the order of all 52 cards in a deck of playing cards in 1 minute and 40 seconds. (I dare you to try and beat that!). This boo...more

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About Joshua Foer

Personal life

Foer is the younger brother of New Republic editor Franklin Foer and novelist Jonathan Safran Foer. He is the son of Esther Foer, president of a public relations firm, and Albert Foer, a think-tank president. He was born in Washington, D.C. and attended Georgetown Day School. He then went on to graduate from Yale University, where he lived in Silliman College, in 2004.

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Jak zostałem geniuszem pamięci. O sztuce i technice zapamiętywania

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“Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. You can exercise daily and eat healthily and live a long life, while experiencing a short one. If you spend your life sitting in a cubicle and passing papers, one day is bound to blend unmemorably into the next - and disappear. That's why it's so important to change routines regularly, and take vacations to exotic locales, and have as many new experiences as possible that can serve to anchor our memories. Creating new memories stretches out psychological time, and lengthens our perception of our lives.” — 59 people liked it

“It is forgetting, not remembering, that is the essence of what makes us human. To make sense of the world, we must filter it. "To think," Borges writes, "is to forget.” — 21 people liked it

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Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

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