Moonwalking Paperback – 10 Oct. 2019

Great and humorous book

Great stuff. Writing style is easy and engages instantly. Informative and entertaining. A great journey from a dedicated author who manages to share his story in an inclusive tale. Something for everyone.

I bought the book and was enthused and entertained about human memory and how from having an ordinary memory, Joshua learned techniques that would enable him to do previously impossible tasks, such as remembering the order of a shuffled deck in less than 3 minutes. Along the way, you'll meet a man who remembered everything but could not forget, a man who remembers nothing after a few seconds but can remember everything from 50 years ago.This lead me to read Remember, Remember: Learn the Stuff You Thought You Never Could by Ed Cooke and you can read my review of it there. Suffice it to say that that book filled in some of the gaps left by this book as to how powerful our memories really are. There are others by Dominic O'Brien and Tony Buzan that I'm studying.From "Remember, Remember", I can now recite from memory all of the kings and queens of England from Offa to Elizabeth II, all of the US presidents from Washington to Obama and all of the British Prime Ministers from Walpole to Cameron. And I'm 47 years old.My wife and my 9-year old daughter can do all of the Kings & Queens and the US Presidents. My 4-year-old son can recite the first six kings - so far.Can anyone do it? I don't see why not. But it requires a willingness to practice because like anything else worth having, practice is the key. Its not instant, but you'll surprise yourself if you persist just a little bit.Both Joshua and Ed are insistent that photographic memories do not exist, that there are well-practised minds and unpractised minds. Some have more help from their neurophysiology such as people who have synaesthesia, the rest of us do not and its not critical.There have been a few reviews which gave 1-star because the book does not cover in detail *how* Joshua Foer became American Memory Champion. That's because those people didn't read the book's description nor read the reviews. And probably won't read this one.

Amazing book. I'm quite happy with my purchase, and it's now one of my favorites books of all time.

I really enjoyed this book, devouring it in just a few sittings.Ostensibly, it tells the story of how the author, covering the US memory championships, takes up the challenge to enter them himself and compete the following year.But along the way the book is an overview of what we know, or think we know, about the way the brain works and how we remember (or fail to remember) stuff. Several common methods of memorisation are outlined - but note this isn't a "how to" book - as is the concept and use of memorisation itself. In a world where we don't have to remember anything - phone numbers, historical facts, the background to current events - because it's all there on devices we carry around, do we need to remember things at all?The book will appeal if you like a good yarn, or your interested in psychology or education. It is entertaining, informative and at times pretty funny, and the end is quite emotional.One of the people the author spends a lot of time with is Ed Cooke, who has since written the book "Remember, Remember..." which I bought and started straight after this. Within half an hour I could remember the names of all the Anglo-Saxon kings of England. Is that useful? No. But it's impressive (although I'm having trouble convincing friends and colleagues). More importantly, the method itself is very useful and I've employed it for other things since.

The two page preface regarding the Greek poet Simonides, followed by the opening page of chapter one ("Dom DeLuise, celebrity fat man (and five of clubs)...) nearly threw me off bothering to read further. Hardly an opening to hook the reader. But it's well worth reading further, and gradually warms up as we realize the situation.Joshua is a young journalist, and covers a memory contest. He gets involved after repeatedly hearing "anyone can do it", and meeting the people who are into memory challenges... who really are pretty normal, abeit rather nerdish (and blokish, apart from a solitary female, who remembers by attaching emotions).The diversions into how our memory works, and therefore how to build upon it, and the importance of memory before the written word was common (let alone the Internet) are valuable insights. And I so agreed with his admittance of "typical" memory - for example, reading a magazine article and remembering nothing of it after turning the page.Joshua explains the principles of mental athletes clearly enough to allow yourself to have a go, if you wish. He clearly expresses the effort involved, and eventually, the futility of it all (as we do indeed have books and the Internet, so we don't need to remember so much).I finished reading this book a few weeks ago. Almost annoyingly, I can still remember the "shopping list" of eccentric items that we were asked to remember by "playing along" while reading the book. It really does work. But it won't help you remember to take your airline tickets with you...

An easy to read book by a 20 something American. Reads like a long magazine article.Could easily be about 30% shorter. Lots of additional some might say filler about the history of memory techniques Romans and Ancient Greeks used. Also stories about chicken sexers.I’m glad I got it for 99p.