Book Review: Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Library.
I first heard about this book in my very favorite talk on memorization in education by E. Christian Kopf at the Society for Classical Learning called “Rote Memorization and Classical Education.” I was astonished to find that my library owned it.
This book is really quite good. I enjoyed Foer’s writing style. Friendly and conversational yet serious at the same time. The story of his introduction, study, and competition at the US Memory Championship provided a wonderful platform to insert all the pieces of research he did on the memory: from remembering to forgetting – sometimes on purpose.
The weird thing about this book is that for as much as I enjoyed it – and found it exceedingly helpful as I consider how best to introduce memory skills and techniques to the children – it always seemed like I had 100 pages more to read, like I never got very far when I did read and was never going to finish.
Definitely glad I read this one. Commonplace entry here.