Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

Yesterday, I started a book called Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer. I finished it early today morning, and couldn’t wait to write about it. This book is about the author’s year-long journey from reporting memory championships as a journalist to winning them as a contender. In his book, Josh teaches us about ancient and modern memorization techniques, the history of memorization, and how the human memory functions. He also provides a critique of the American education system, self-help authors, and savant-posing mnemonists.

I think it is a very interesting book, and I’m excited to apply some of the techniques (such as, chunking, memory palaces, PAO, and the Major System) to my own study. I think it could help me to digest large amounts of information quickly in my courses. I found that while the techniques sound easy, they were hard in practice and required lots of creativity. As the book mentions, training your creativity is a large part of training your memory. I hope to improve both my memory and creativity in the future.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I think it's important to point out that it is more about Josh's story than instructions for improving your memory. Most of the negative amazon comments misunderstand this, so don't make the same mistake.