Moonwalking With Einstein

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Have you ever wondered who the world's smartest person is? In a world that celebrates the antics of the world's strongest people very little time is given to those who excel in mental pursuits. Such antipathy for mental prowess put Joshua Foer on a quest to find out who might fit the bill of world's smartest person. When he began his quest, he did not discover who the smartest person was in the world...rather he was introduced to the world of the mental athletes.

Foer's path crossed with the like of memory champions Ben Pridemore, who could memorize gargantuan amounts of numerical digits and the layout of five decks of cards in just a few minutes. Such mental prowess piqued Foer's curiosity and set the journalist within ablaze to discover all he could about their techniques. His quest propelled him along a path which would ultimately culminate in his competition in the U.S. Memory Championship.

This trek placed him in the pathway of interesting individuals-such as Britain's Tony Buzan, an educational consultant who is credited with developing the "mind mapping" technique of taking notes. After meeting with Buzan, Foer enlisted the help of a youthful United Kingdom memory competitor, Ed Cooke, to coach him and prepare him for the U.S. Memory Championship. At Ed's behest, Foer dove into available literature-finding references to mnemonic techniques from around the fifth century BC. Not wanting to leave any stone unturned, Foer also tracks down Kim Peek, the inspiration for the character in Dustin Hoffman's Rain Main, to determine if there were any memory techniques he could glean from an obvious savant..

Foer unearthed techniques many refer to as building a memory palace which allowed him to "store" information spatially along routes of which he was familiar. Want to learn a list of 75 words? No problem. Imagine walking through your house and assigning these words in bizarre contexts (include the most sensory stimulation you can) along the pathway. Suppose the first item is an aardvark...you might place the inconspicuous fellow outside your mailbox juggling the second word you need to remember. Then, when called upon to regurgitate the list you would simply walk through these pre-constructed locations and recall the mental images. Foer used this very technique to place in key events and ultimately win the 2006 National Memory Championship. Not only did he win, he set a new U.S. record by memorizing a deck of playing cards in a minute and 40 seconds.

Although the title seems a little bizarre, it is not until you are reading his blow-by-blow account of the championship that you realize that one of his "mental images," was Foer moonwalking with Einstein to help remember a playing card. After the championship, Foer settled back into journalism and is not sure that his overall memory was changed very much.

This book is commended as a good read of an interesting memory challenge.

But wait, where did I put my car keys?

Moonwalking With Einstein - The Art And Science Of Remembering Everything

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This is the lesson that Joshua Foer, a science writer and journalist, took away with him when he looked at the world memory championships not long ago.

An engaging writer, who believes in becoming involved with his subjects and stories, Foer, who won an Amazon 2010 "Best Books of the Month" Award, looked the wide range of people competing in this amazing competition.

There was one competitor whose memory was so poor that he could not remember beyond the last instant of his life while another competitor was able to memorize complex theorems and mathematical problems, even though the contestant doesn't understand anything about math himself.

Then, there was one of the champions who was able to memorize the exact order of a 1528-digit integer.

The deeper he looked the more Foer wanted to find out how the process worked because, as he noted in one part of his well-written work, he had trouble remembering where he left his car keys and then wondered how many of us have the same problem. It turns out that there are more people out there with this issue than you may think and Foer works with the champions, using their techniques to not only learn where he left his car keys, but other things such as the things like: Brains find it easier to use visual cues than lists; Brains can be trained to take the visual cues they have been given and can then be trained to turn those visual cues into usable lists.

For example, Foer, learning the tricks of the trade from the masters, was able to learn long lists by using a method he called POA - person, object, action. In other words, he was able to remember the layout of deck of cards or actions by associating each individual card or action with a person, perhaps the presenter or a child, or associating the list with an object, an auto or item like a specific clock, for example. Finally, here was the action, where he was able to associate a piece of a long list with a specific action.

In other words, if the item he wanted to remember was the first of a series of actions, he would associate the item in the list with that action. Other people use mnemonics to do the same thing or providing tricks for every day items you hardly think about so that they remain with you all of the time, such as the location of your house keys or your car keys.

There are many, varied training techniques and Foer's engaging style not only shows people master the many issues they have in remembering long lists. It was this type of perseverance and memory management that enabled a contestant to memorize more than 1500 numbers in a row - without knowing them beforehand - and then repeat the list exactly.

The mind is a fascinating science. Some says that we don't use a-tenth of our conscious minds and from the way Foer writes, it is possible. If you want to learn how the master's do it in a delightful, quite readable style, the you will enjoy Foer's work and exactly how he remembers where his keys are.

Roberto Sedycias works as an IT consultant for ecommUS-Books