Wow! eBook
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything reprint Edition
Author(s): Joshua Foer (Author)
- Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
- Publication Date: 28 Feb. 2012
- Edition: reprint
- Language: English
- Print length: 320 pages
- ISBN-10: 0143120530
- ISBN-13: 9780143120537
Book Description
“Highly entertaining.” —Adam Gopnik,
The New Yorker“Funny, curious, erudite, and full of useful details about ancient techniques of training memory.” —
The Boston GlobeAn instant bestseller that has now become a classic, Moonwalking with Einstein recounts Joshua Foer's yearlong quest to improve his memory under the tutelage of top "mental athletes." He draws on cutting-edge research, a surprising cultural history of remembering, and venerable tricks of the mentalist's trade to transform our understanding of human memory. From the United States Memory Championship to deep within the author's own mind, this is an electrifying work of journalism that reminds us that, in every way that matters, we are the sum of our memories.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Captivating . . . His narrative is smart and funny and, like the work of Dr. Oliver Sacks, it’s informed by a humanism that enables its author to place the mysteries of the brain within a larger philosophical and cultural context.”
—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times“His passionate and deeply engrossing book . . . is a resounding tribute to the muscularity of the mind . . . In the end, Moonwalking with Einstein reminds us that though brain science is a wild frontier and the mechanics of memory little understood, our minds are capable of epic achievements.” —The Washington Post
“Joshua Foer’s book . . . is both fun and reassuring. All it takes to have a better memory, he contends, are a few tricks and a good erotic imagination.” —Maureen Dowd, The New York Times
“Highly entertaining.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
“It’s delightful to travel with him on this unlikely journey, and his entertaining treatment of memory as both sport and science is spot on . . . Moonwalking with Einstein proves uplifting: It shows that with motivation, focus, and a few clever tricks, our minds can do rather extraordinary things.” —The Wall Street Journal
“It’s a terrific book: sometimes weird but mostly smart, funny, and ultimately a lovely exploration of the ways that we preserve our lives and our world in the golden amber of human memory.” —Deborah Blum, New Scientist
“Foer’s book is relevant and entertaining as he shows us ways we can unlock our own talent to remember more.”
—USA Today“A fascinating scientific analysis of mnemonic mysteries. What we remember, [Foer] says, defines who we are.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Sprightly, entertaining . . . [Foer] has a gift for communicating fairly complex ideas in a manner that is palatable without being patronizing.” —Financial Times
“[An] inspired and well-written debut book about not just memorization, but about what it means to be educated and the best way to become so, about expertise in general, and about the not-so-hidden ‘secrets’ of acquiring skills.”
—The Seattle Times“[An] instant bestseller.”
—San Francisco Chronicle“Funny, curious, erudite, and full of useful details about ancient techniques of training memory.”
—The Boston Globe“With originality, high energy, and an appealing blend of chutzpah and humility, [Foer] writes of his own adventures and probes the history and literature of memory, the science of how the brain functions, and the connections between memory, identity, and culture . . . Moonwalking with Einstein . . . is engaging and timely.” —The Jewish Week
“A smart, thoughtful, engaging book.”
—The Portland Oregonian“Charming . . . The book is part of a grand tradition, the writer as participating athlete, reminiscent of George Plimpton taking up football in
Paper Lion.” —O, The Oprah Magazine“[A] wonderful first book.”
—Newcity“Fascinating.”
—Town & Country“For one year, Foer tried to attain total recall, extracting secrets from the top researchers, the real Rain Man, and the world’s memory champs. He triumphed, both in his quest and in this lively account, which is, no exaggeration, unforgettable.” —Parade
“In recounting his year in training for the USA Memory Championship, journalist Foer delivers a rich history of memory.”
—Discover Magazine“Foer’s history of memory is rich with information about the nature of memory and how it makes us who we are.”
—Scientific American“A brief and pithy recounting of Foer’s exploration of the fuzzy borders of his brain—a marveling at how and why it’s able to do something quite unexpected . . .
Moonwalking with Einstein fits handily inline with the recent tradition of ‘big idea’ books.” —The Millions“An original, entertaining exploration about how and why we remember.”
—Kirkus Reviews“An engaging, informative, and for the forgetful, encouraging book.”
—Booklist“Hard to put down . . . The mind is a bigger thing than any of us realize, and Foer reminds us to keep exploring it.”
—Barnes & Noble Review“He has thought deeply about memory and his effort yields questions that are well worth reflecting on.”
—The Daily Beast“Intriguing . . . Foer does an excellent job of tracing the history of the arts of memory.”
—The Forward“The kind of nonfiction work that gets people talking . . . A highly enjoyable read.” —Thirteen.org
“You have to love a writer who employs chick-sexing to help explain human memory. Foer is a charmer, a crackling mind, a fresh wind. He approaches a complex topic with so much humanity, humor, and originality that you don’t realize how much you’re taking in and understanding. It’s kind of miraculous.”
—Mary Roach, author of Packing for Mars, Bonk, Spook, and Stiff“
Moonwalking with Einstein isn’t just a splendid overview of an essential aspect of our humanity—our memory; it is also a witty and engaging account of how Foer went from being a guy with an average memory to winning the USA Memory Championship.” —Dan Ariely, professor of behavioral economics at Duke University and author of The Upside of Irrationality and Predictably Irrational“In this marvelous book, Joshua Foer invents a new genre of nonfiction. This is a work of science journalism wrapped around an adventure story, a bildungs-roman fused to a vivid investigation of human memory. If you want to understand how we remember, and how we can all learn to remember better, then read this book.”
—Jonah Lehrer, contributing editor to Wired and author of How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist“Joshua Foer proves what few of us are willing to get our heads around: there’s more room in our brains than we ever imagined. Moonwalking with Einstein isn’t a how-to guide to remembering a name or where you put your keys. It’s a riveting exploration of humankind’s centuries-old obsession with memory, and one man’s improbable quest to master his own.” —Stefan Fatsis, author of A Few Seconds of Panic and Word Freak
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
There were no other survivors.
Family members arriving at the scene of the fifth-century-B.C. banquet hall catastrophe pawed at the debris for signs of their loved ones—rings, sandals, anything that would allow them to identify their kin for proper burial.
Minutes earlier, the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos had stood to deliver an ode in celebration of Scopas, a Thessalian nobleman. As Simonides sat down, a messenger tapped him on the shoulder. Two young men on horseback were waiting outside, anxious to tell him something. He stood up again and walked out the door. At the very moment he crossed the threshold, the roof of the banquet hall collapsed in a thundering plume of marble shards and dust.
He stood now before a landscape of rubble and entombed bodies. The air, which had been filled with boisterous laughter moments before, was smoky and silent. Teams of rescuers set to work frantically digging through the collapsed building. The corpses they pulled out of the wreckage were mangled beyond recognition. No one could even say for sure who had been inside. One tragedy compounded another.
Then something remarkable happened that would change forever how people thought about their memories. Simonides sealed his senses to the chaos around him and reversed time in his mind. The piles of marble returned to pillars and the scattered frieze fragments reassembled in the air above. The stoneware scattered in the debris re-formed into bowls. The splinters of wood poking above the ruins once again became a table. Simonides caught a glimpse of each of the banquet guests at his seat, carrying on oblivious to the impending catastrophe. He saw Scopas laughing at the head of the table, a fellow poet sitting across from him sponging up the remnants of his meal with a piece of bread, a nobleman smirking. He turned to the window and saw the messengers approaching, as if with some important news.
Simonides opened his eyes. He took each of the hysterical relatives by the hand and, carefully stepping over the debris, guided them, one by one, to the spots in the rubble where their loved ones had been sitting.
At that moment, according to legend, the art of memory was born.
ONE
THE SMARTEST MAN IS HARD TO FIND
Dom DeLuise, celebrity fat man (and five of clubs), has been implicated in the following unseemly acts in my mind’s eye: He has hocked a fat globule of spittle (nine of clubs) on Albert Einstein’s thick white mane (three of diamonds) and delivered a devastating karate kick (five of spades) to the groin of Pope Benedict XVI (six of diamonds). Michael Jackson (king of hearts) has engaged in behavior bizarre even for him. He has defecated (two of clubs) on a salmon burger (king of clubs) and captured his flatulence (queen of clubs) in a balloon (six of spades). Rhea Perlman, diminutive Cheers bartendress (and queen of spades), has been caught cavorting with the seven-foot-seven Sudanese basketball star Manute Bol (seven of clubs) in a highly explicit (and in this case, anatomically improbable) two-digit act of congress (three of clubs).
This tawdry tableau, which I’m not proud to commit to the page, goes a long way toward explaining the unlikely spot I find myself in at the moment. Sitting to my left is Ram Kolli, an unshaven twenty-five-year-old business consultant from Richmond, Virginia, who is also the defending United States memory champion. To my right is the muzzle of a television camera from a national cable network. Spread out behind me, where I can’t see them and they can’t disturb me, are about a hundred spectators and a pair of TV commentators offering play-by-play analysis. One is a blow-dried veteran boxing announcer named Kenny Rice, whose gravelly, bedtime voice can’t conceal the fact that he seems bewildered by this jamboree of nerds. The other is the Pelé of USA memory sport, a bearded forty-three-year-old chemical engineer and four-time national champion from Fayetteville, North Carolina, named Scott Hagwood. In the corner of the room sits the object of my affection: a kitschy two-tiered trophy consisting of a silver hand with gold nail polish brandishing a royal flush, and, in a patriotic flourish, three bald eagles perched just below. It’s nearly as tall as my two-year-old niece (and lighter than most of her stuffed animals).
The audience has been asked not to take any flash photographs and to maintain total silence. Not that Ram or I could possibly hear them. Both of us are wearing earplugs. I’ve also got on a pair of industrial-strength earmuffs that look like they belong on an aircraft carrier deckhand (because in the heat of a memory competition, there is no such thing as deaf enough). My eyes are closed. On a table in front of me, lying facedown between my hands, are two shuffled decks of playing cards. In a moment, the chief arbiter will click a stopwatch and I will have five minutes to memorize the order of both decks.
The unlikely story of how I ended up in the finals of the USA Memory Championship, stock-still and sweating profusely, begins a year earlier on a snowy highway in central Pennsylvania. I had been driving from my home in Washington, D.C., to the Lehigh Valley to do an interview for Discover magazine with a theoretical physicist at Kutztown University, who had invented a vacuum chamber device that was supposed to pop the world’s largest popcorn. My route took me through York, Pennsylvania, home of the Weightlifting Hall of Fame and Museum. I thought that sounded like something I didn’t want to die without having seen. And I had an hour to kill.
As it turned out, the Hall of Fame was little more than a sterile collection of old photographs and memorabilia displayed on the ground floor of the corporate offices of the nation’s largest barbell manufacturer. Museologically, it was crap. But it’s where I first saw a black-and-white photo of Joe “The Mighty Atom” Greenstein, a hulking five-foot-four Jewish-American strongman who had earned his nickname in the 1920s by performing such inspiring feats as biting quarters in half and lying on a bed of nails while a fourteen-man Dixieland band played on his chest. He once changed all four tires on a car without any tools. A caption next to the photo billed Greenstein as “the strongest man in the world.”
Staring at that photo, I thought it would be pretty interesting if the world’s strongest person ever got to meet the world’s smartest person. The Mighty Atom and Einstein, arms wrapped around each other: an epic juxtaposition of muscle and mind. A neat photo to hang above my desk, at least. I wondered if it had ever been taken. When I got home, I did a little Googling. The world’s strongest person was pretty easy to find: His name was Mariusz Pudzianowski. He lived in Biała Rawska, Poland, and could deadlift 924 pounds (about thirty of my nieces).
The world’s smartest person, on the other hand, was not so easily identified. I typed in “highest IQ,” “intelligence champion,” “smartest in the world.” I learned that there was someone in New York City with an IQ of 228, and a chess player in Hungary who once played fifty-two simultaneous blindfolded games. There was an Indian woman who could calculate the twenty-third root of a two-hundred-digit number in her head in fifty seconds, and someone else who could solve a four-dimensional Rubik’s cube, whatever that is. And of course there were plenty of more obvious Stephen Hawking types of candidates. Brains are notoriously trickier to quantify than brawn.
In the course of my Googling, though, I did discover one intriguing candidate who was, if not the smartest person in the world, at least some kind of freakish...
