Notes/Feedback: This was my first book on the topic of "mental athletes." The story is a memoir by the author into his yearlong journey at winning the American Memory Championship. It starts off with him as a journalist going to cover one of these events and slowly gets hooked by one of the organizers. Joshua is certain that all of these people must have a special mind to be able to quickly remember a shuffled deck of cards, or names to 100+ new faces, etc. However, the organizer is adamant that their memory is not special at all. They just have a system they practice that helps them achieve these things. To prove his point he offers to train Joshua for one year and thinks he can even win the national championship. The book is not a how-to on memorization techniques. The author does cover some of those areas such as "memory palaces" but the main story is laid out with past case studies of people with good and bad memories. Memory loss, brain damage, etc. Overall it was a very interesting view into his journey and all of the case studies he lays out into different aspects of the brain and memory.
Recommendation: I would recommend this book. No real purpose behind it other than it being interesting if anyone has thought about how to improve their memory.
Notes/Feedback:
This was my first book on the topic of "mental athletes." The story is a memoir by the author into his yearlong journey at winning the American Memory Championship. It starts off with him as a journalist going to cover one of these events and slowly gets hooked by one of the organizers. Joshua is certain that all of these people must have a special mind to be able to quickly remember a shuffled deck of cards, or names to 100+ new faces, etc. However, the organizer is adamant that their memory is not special at all. They just have a system they practice that helps them achieve these things. To prove his point he offers to train Joshua for one year and thinks he can even win the national championship. The book is not a how-to on memorization techniques. The author does cover some of those areas such as "memory palaces" but the main story is laid out with past case studies of people with good and bad memories. Memory loss, brain damage, etc. Overall it was a very interesting view into his journey and all of the case studies he lays out into different aspects of the brain and memory.
Recommendation:
I would recommend this book. No real purpose behind it other than it being interesting if anyone has thought about how to improve their memory.