Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

Personal and Informative

"Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything" by Joshua Foer is a memoir of the author's attempted to win the U.S. memory championship. Along the way Mr. Foer attempts to explain some tricks, techniques and the science around memory.

The book follows the gripping journey taken by Joshua Foer as he participates in the U.S. Memory Championship. As a science journalist Foer becomes interested in the champions' secrets as well as the secrets of the brain which we still do not fully understand.

Foer learns how to naturally memorize information with the help of experts and to master techniques which make memorization easier.

"Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything" by Joshua Foer is a fabulous memoir which is not only personal and informative, but also highly entertaining.

As a journalist, Mr. Foer became interested in those "mental athletes" who can memorize random data (order of packs of cards, long lists, etc.) when he covered the U.S. Memory Championship as an assignment. As he researched more into this area he became intrigued and wondered if he could do it also.

At the start of his research, Mr. Foer went to meet psychologist Anders Ericsson who studies those with exceptional memory. "SF" can remember 80 digits after a single hearing, for example. During Foer's attempt, Ericsson would study him - a man without an exceptional memory. However, in a very poignant part of the book he also meets with a man who completely lost his short term memory.

Over the next year Foer studied hard to improve his memory, or rather improve memorizing random stuff (there is a difference as we find out). The path we find ourselves going along with Mr. Foer on his journey is delightful, inventing and funny, the people he meets are interesting and quirky.

Experiment:
Is the human mind really susceptible to the clever tricks Mr. Foer describes in his book?
I attempted to find out.

One of the memorization techniques involves a "memory palace" and is supposedly a very old method. The technique involves imagining yourself walking around a familiar building and placing objects on a list in that building (your home, first grad class, grandma's home, etc.).
Supposedly if you walk your way through that "memory palace" again you should be able to retrieve those items without an issue.

On pages 92-93 Mr. Foer describes his first memorization list given to him in Central Park by English memory champion Ed Cooke (Pickled garlic, Cottage cheese, salmon, six bottles of white wine, socks, three hula hoops, snorkel, dry ice machine, email Sophia, etc.)

As I walked though my home, in my mind, I placed all fifteen items around my house (using quirky stories such as having three Hawaiian dancers perform with hula hoops on my son's train table) and, believe it or not, it worked.
It amazed me so much I came home and asked my wife to do the same thing.

Guess what?
She did and she was amazed as well. Over the next several days we challenged one another, in random places, to name the list.

As it turned out, learning memorization was a part of every school curriculum in the early years of the country - however, from some reason, it has been abandoned.
That's too bad.

32 out of 34 people found this review helpful.

An enjoyable read about our memory!

It was an easy and enjoyable read that covered the history of memory, memory tricks and specific interesting minds in our world today. The author even visits with the famous "Rainman" character portrayed by Dustin Hoffman. A must read. After reading it, I bought a copy for my dad.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

After working with publicly available Memory systems and doing m

After working with publicly available Memory systems and doing my own research for over 20 years it is refreshing to see validation that I was on the right track. The level of humor was appropriate as well for a subject that could definitely use it. Made me laugh out loud on more than one occasion.

The book was everything it was described to be and then some and gave a brilliant history on the subject, sorely missing by all predecessor tomes on the Art & Science of memory systems.

I look forward to further tangible advancements in learning systems for society as a whole. This book gives a very good dissertation on how the hope is still alive. Now the fun will begin for usable memory systems I'm sure :)

Congrats Josh

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

I remembered Where I Parked.

I pass it along so other can enjoy and learn fro, book that I have purchased.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Fun read, reveals much about the brain.

Being someone who has an awful memory, I was drawn to the subject matter. Its was interesting to find out that literate people from the Greeks to the Middle Ages could memorize entire texts, sometimes backwards and that you and even me can learn the techniques to do so. This is no self-help book though and not written as such. However, we often forget how much our brains can do with all the technology that we rely on. I've already memorized a poem using the memory palace idea from the book. (Ode on a Grecian Urn) Its not the best writing but it doesn't get dull.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Good Read

excellent

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

If you like participatory journalism, you will LIKE this book!

Josh Foer, a then-recently graduated Journalism student, covered the 2004 U.S. Memory Championship for a popular culture magazine. What he saw in covering that event was intriguing; he found “a bunch of guys (and a few ladies) . . . poring over pages of random numbers and long lists of words” (p.8) which they would then recite, from memory. The winner being, for this event (there were five for the Championship), the individual who could recall the largest number of words and numbers. By the end of the tournament, he had witnessed: the recitation a previously unpublished poem by the participants, recall the faces and names of 99 photographic headshots and as many of 300 random words as possible in 15 minutes, plus as many of 1000 random digits (253 was the winner) and recall the order of a shuffled deck of cards with only 5 minutes preparation. Witnessing these “Mental Athletes,” (MA’s) was amazing and something he wanted to learn more about. He spent the next year learning and training to participate in the 2005 U.S. Memory Championship.
This book is a history of memory and an account of Mr. Foer’s preparation for the championship, it is not a manual for learning how to have better recall. He learns, and relates, that memory is something that can be improved if one understands how humans remember. The historical research he gives is absorbing as he starts with the 5th Century B.C. Greek poet Simonides, the first to use the technique of memory utilized by the MA’s in the championships. The technique is called a “Memory Palace,” where the individual creates a graphic image of what needs to be recalled and placing those images around a familiar (held in the mind) location. All one needs to do to recall is “visit” the stated palace and “see” the items. Of course, the process is more complicated and requires practice but is surprisingly easy to comprehend and begin to utilize.
The need for such “memory aids,” was created in when the ability to read was extremely rare. Knowledge, history, folk lore – any needed information – was passed down by Oral Tradition (from mouth to ear) and had to be recalled with a fine measure of accuracy. Since words were more representative then than in a culture where they are read, they were “seen” as images within the imagination of the learner. Therefore, the concept of developing images for what one needs to recall would have been a far less exotic concept for those in the past than those of us in the computer age. Our ancestors understood inherently that we can “only understand what (we) can visualize” (p.33) and “we don’t remember isolated facts, we remember in context” (p.65). Chapter Five offers an insight into this process as the reader gets to “learn” of the Memory Palace along with the author. In that short introduction, I was able to accomplish the memorization of a list of random words by using this technique.
“SPOILER ALERT!” Mr. Foer won the 2005 U.S. Memory Championship, setting a new record for recalling the order of a shuffled deck of cards (in 1 minute 40 seconds). He did not fare as well in the World Championships (where it is not unusual for participants to recall a shuffled deck in 30 seconds). He choose not to return to defend his championship, as to do so would require more time than he was willing to commit.
Upon reflection, he found that his memory had not improved through the training as a Mental Athlete – he still misplaced his keys, had trouble remembe

How to operate your brain

Remember Song Lines? A unique way of organizing knowledge? Here's another shot -- an amplification -- , re-exposing the ancient techniques of populating ones mind with knowledge for creative grist. Meet some unique, contemporary characters and six pages of suggested further reading as you probably, for the first time, learn how -- don't be insulted! -- to operate your brain. (That's the realistic, I believe, claim of this book.) It takes you from the bards of Yugoslavia (and prehistoric Greece) to the Memory Championship of the United States, where the author takes on the titans of recall. An easy read and fascinating.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Forgetting to Remember

Lifeless. Doesn't really go anywhere. Rather dry and curiously unattached vis-a-vis interest level.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Interesting and Worthwhile Reading

Not even done with it yet and my memory is better already. Kudos to the Author.

Best non-fiction book I've read in years

A fantastic book that I wish I could have read years and years ago. Simply written, it is captivating in it's well-crafted, inspired prose. I will be giving this as a gift to some, and recommending it to many. I wouldn't be surprised to see it become a required reading in liberal arts college courses and with any luck, in the earlier education arenas, too.

Great Read

I purchased two copies of this book; one for myself and one as a gift. I saw the author interviewed on several talk shows, and it seemed interesting.

Train your brain

Good information on how to improve your memory

Forget Me Not!

Never be at a loss for information again. Moonwalking etc.. offers multiple methods of remembering key and not so important info. A real Gem!

Lots of things to learn in this book.

The book was an interesting read to me because I was learning something I hadn't known before. However, sometimes my interest was lost. But overall, I would recommend this book to friends and family.

very inciteful

Ideas on improving brain

TRULY THE "ART AND SCIENCE"

Not as gripping as expectedI finally gave it away for someone else to read

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Great Book

I have often wondered why our brains are not used to capacity. Maybe because it's easier in the short term to make excuses for our shortcomings than it is put forth the effort to do anything about it. This is a book that will challenge you and inspire you to look outside of yourself and lo'-n-behold, you'll find yourself.

An easy read.

Not what I expected but very informative. I would have actually liked more technique-sharing than storytelling.

A layman's guide into the science and practice of memory and memorization, and why memory is or should be important to all of us at this day and age.

When I bought the book my thought was that author was on to discuss or describe some system that Einstein used in his studies or an account of someone who happened to spend some time with him and now recollects those moments. Of course I was wrong but I kept on reading. This is a book on memorization and the importance of memory, not so much on how's (although there are references to literature that dicusses how's of mnemonics) but more on why's and some what-if's.
We mostly seem to take our ability to memorize for granted and think of improving it only if we forget something that was important to us. And at this day and age we have plenty of memory crutches to help us not forget. Since we have our personal memory gadgets to remember for us things we don't feel like remembering but have to know, why should we work at improving our capability to memorize?
However, don't expect to find a guide on improving your memory here, although author does discuss some literature on that subject, and you could also google his name to see the techniques he used to improve his memory to the point of winning US memory championship. The author shines in explaining why literacy developed throughout centuries, again not on how's but why's and his summary actually makes a lot of sense in that the literacy developed as an aspect of oral tradition.
This book is also author's personal account on how he prepared for US memory championship and how he went on winning it, not as a dry, ultra- introspective account but as an interesting description of almost- adventure: what it took for him to reach that stage to be able to win the championship and all the colorfull characters he met in that process. This part of the book has a rather shocking end.
All in all, an educative read on something many of us take for granted- our ability to study, memorize and learn.
Turn- off's: one too many references to Torah, bar-mitzwah and author's ethnicity. No need to glorify it. Instead, that space could have been used for extending the discussion on Giordano Bruno and the efforts on the Memory Theatre, for example.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.