Moonwalking with Einstein was not quite what i was expecting. Instead of being a self-help book, it's about Foer's year-long journey from covering the world memory championships as a journalist to competing in the US memory championship just a year later. He was in awe at how much information people could retain and recall in a short period of time. But the competitors he talked to were quick to tell him that everyone could do it, it's all parlor tricks. So he sets out to build his memory to that and along the way talks to experts and savants about their memories and their tricks of the trade. Savants generally can't explain how they remember, but people who have trained share a lot of the same tricks.
The tricks Foer gets into are interesting, and work. Early on, a mentor helps him learn how to memorize a list of things. As he walks through what he did to remember each item, it got stuck in my head. I still remember everything until I stopped focusing on that segment. And I couldn't recall anything past that point immediately after I read it.
While it's "easy" (it does require a daily training), it seems pretty pointless in today's world for day-to-day info. Foer himself notes it would've been great in high school and college to know these techniques, but, as an adult, it's just so much easier to write a list and put a number in your phone.
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