Memory

How We Use It, Lose It and Can Improve It.

Acquiring knowledge, developing skills: the memory is essential to what makes us fully human. Those things we recall - and those we forget - help make us the individuals that we are; each with our own distinct collection of remembered thoughts, impressions and emotions.

David Samuel considers all that has been thought and learned about the memory, from the theories of the ancients to the most contemporary cutting-edge research. The difference between long-term and short-term memory; the effects of alcohol and ageing, drugs and disease; the tricks memory may play on us and the ways in which we can work on the memory to enhance our intellectual powers: these are just a few of the matters touched on in a wide-ranging and enthralling guide to this most exciting and intriguing of human sciences.