Moonwalking with Einstein

Foer set out as a journalist to cover the U.S. Memory Championship and ended up competing in it a year later, after training with memory techniques that stretch back to ancient Greek and Roman orators. His argument is that memory champions aren't wired differently from anyone else — brain scans show no unusual anatomy — they've simply mastered old, transferable techniques like the memory palace, which exploits the brain's disproportionate skill at remembering vivid spatial and sensory images to store almost anything else.

The book matters because it's part memoir, part science journalism, and part cultural history of memory itself, tracing how externalizing memory onto books, then computers, then phones, has quietly eroded a mental faculty humans once trained deliberately, and asking what we lose when we stop trying to remember at all.

Who should read it

Anyone curious about how memory actually works, or looking for practical techniques to remember names, speeches, or facts, will enjoy this blend of adventure narrative and cognitive science. It's also a fun read for trivia lovers and anyone who's ever wondered how "mental athletes" perform their feats.

About the author

Joshua Foer is an American journalist and science writer who won the USA Memory Championship in 2006, the same year covered in this book, after roughly a year of training under memory expert Ed Cooke.