Foer’s unlikely journey from chronically forgetful science journalist to U.S. Memory Champion explores the vast, hidden impact of memory on every aspect of our lives.
On average, people squander forty days annually compensating for things they’ve forgotten. Joshua Foer used to be one of those people. But after just one year of intensive memory training, Foer won the U.S. Memory Championship and competed internationally. Even more important, Foer found a vital truth we too often forget: In every way that matters, we are the sum of our memories.
Named “One of Ten People Who Could Change the World” by The New Statesman, Foer’s highly anticipated debut book, Moonwalking with Einstein, became a #1 Amazon best-seller just days after publication. Drawing on cutting-edge research, a surprising cultural history of memory, and venerable tricks of the mentalist’s trade, Moonwalking with Einstein challenges our understanding of human remembering. Under the tutelage of top “mental athletes,” he learns ancient techniques once employed by Cicero to memorize his speeches and by Medieval scholars to memorize entire books.
Immersing himself obsessively in a quirky subculture of competitive memorizers, Foer learns to apply techniques that call on imagination as much as determination-showing that memorization can be anything but rote.
Foer takes his inquiry well beyond the arena of mental athletes, across the country and deep into his own mind. In San Diego, he meets an affable old man with one of the most severe case of amnesia on record, where he learns that memory is at once more elusive and more reliable than we might think. In Salt Lake City, he swaps secrets with a savant who claims to have memorized more than nine thousand books. At a high school in the South Bronx, he finds a history teacher using twenty- five-hundred-year-old memory techniques to give his students an edge in the state Regents exam.
At a time when electronic devices have all but rendered our individual memories obsolete, Foer’s bid to resurrect the forgotten art of remembering becomes an urgent quest. Moonwalking with Einstein brings Joshua Foer to the apex of the U.S. Memory Championship and readers to a profound appreciation of a gift we all possess but that too often slips our minds.
With a penchant for investigating the world’s oddities and eccentricities, Foer has written for National Geographic, Esquire, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Slate. No less eccentric than his subjects, Foer is the co-founder of Atlas Obscura, an online compendium of “The World’s Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica.” Voted one of the “50 Most Influential Jewish Leaders” of 2010 by The Forward, Foer is also the co-founder of Sukkah City, one of the largest architectural design competitions of the last twenty years, which attempted to re-imagine 3,000-year old ritual Jewish huts. He is a graduate of Yale University.
At the podium, Foer delves into the lessons learned from Moonwalking with Einstein, inspiring audiences to become a master at their own game, whether in the boardroom or the classroom. Sharing the memory techniques that earned him the unlikely title of U.S. Memory Champion, Foer discusses what it takes surpass the competition and become an expert through mindful practice. Describing how he overcame the “OK Plateau,” Foer shares how perseverance, concentration and creative thinking are crucial to overcoming limitations. He also demonstrates a variety of memory techniques — pioneered by the Greeks and Romans — to help train the brain and enhance our ability to remember.
