Moonwalking with Einstein

Joshua Foer's personal story is fundamentally intriguing: how does an otherwise ordinary journalist develop the skills necessary to be crowned the 2006 USA Memory Champion? This is the subject of his compelling new book Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything.

But the book is more than just an exemplary piece of participatory journalism chronicling Foer's rise through the ranks of elite memory champions. It is also a wonderful reader on the science of human memory that waxes philosophical on the frontiers and limitations of our ability to remember things.

It is this delicate balance that makes Moonwalking with Einstein both very informative and highly entertaining. Foer begins by introducing the challenge before him, but soon thereafter deftly takes his readers on a journey through neuroscience as it applies to the art of remembering. Just as adeptly, he discusses many different tricks -- memory palaces and other mnemonic devices -- that allow people to commit to memory random numbers, names and faces, and decks of cards with unbelievable effectiveness. Many colorful individuals are also introduced along the way, from eccentric competitors at different memory competitions, to probably the most forgetful man in the world, to a "savant" whose genius may amount to no more than an exceptional memory.

Such is the book's charm: for as many different directions as the book branches out into, there is an unmistakeable clarity and cohesiveness to the book as befits no less than a person with an uncanny ability to remember disparate pieces of information without losing sight of the bigger picture. And he's a capable storyteller, too.

So how best to describe this first book from Joshua Foer? A compendium of scientific facts about the human brain? An exploration of various tips to improve one's memory? A memoir? Yes, yes, and yes. Moonwalking with Einstein is all of these things, and a great book besides.