Moonwalking with Einstein is an extremely entertaining and well-written story about the author’s journey from an ordinary journalist with mediocre memory to the American memory champion, as well as an intriguing depiction about the history and edge cases of memory and memory techniques. I have been wanting to read the book for ages, naturally wanting a much better memory especially now that I’m a year away from the IB final exams.

The book mainly focuses on one particular technique called “the memory palace” which involves the use of both our spatial and visual memory that are the naturally strongest areas of memory. Utilizing this technique is about creating elaborate multi-sensory and often even a little scandalous images to represent the things to be memorized and placing them in different loci, familiar locations and places such as the sofa of one’s childhood home. In fact, I still remember the 15-point to-do list in detail and in order that I memorized once when Foer walks us through his first encounter with the method. Pickled garlic, cottage cheese, peat smoked salmon etc..

However, the book is more of a story and an investigation than a tutorial to these techniques. Additionally, it is concluded that although certainly somewhat useful in real life, it often doesn’t make sense utilizing these techniques in most cases and that memorizing and understanding are very distinct things and hence they might not help me as much in all of my final exams as I might have hoped. On top of all this, memorization seems to be quite hard work that requires a lot of deliberate practicing that will definitely lead to substantial results within the area of practice that doesn’t, however, automatically translate into others. Numbers, names and faces, random words, decks of cards and poetry etc. are all their own distinct categories that each require their own extensive systems to be developed and maintained. For example, the standard for number memorization is to create a separate mental image for each two digit combination from 00 to 99 and store them in different loci within the same memory palace. Nevertheless, being able to memorize your favorite quotes and important statistics and news, not forgetting the names of new acquaintances, holding a respectable amount of common knowledge, actually being able to organize your memories, patching up the holes in your knowledge last minute before an exam and just being able to pull off impossible-seeming party tricks would certainly be quite handy.

Although the book is packed in this story-form, it does explain the most important principles of how memory works and elaborates on its links to for example, creativity, which I found very fascinating. Thus, the book is the perfect first read for anyone interested in the world of memory and especially its improvement. Although ten years old already, it’s a fascinating and entertaining story and after sparking the reader’s interest, points them to the right directions for further reading and exploration. I would definitely recommend it to everyone fascinated by the human brain and memory and those who seek for ways to improve themselves or just see what people are capable of. Most of all, I highly recommend this to every student, especially those studying memory-intensive subjects such as history, biology and geography. In fact, it’s outrageous that we are still being taught memory-intensive subjects without any memory training whatsoever. Let’s just hope my summer holidays are long enough for me to develop these techniques to the extent where it will help me in the coming finals!