Improving Your Memory (Complete Idiot's Guide to) [Mass Market Paperback]

When, after many pages, the book does get on track, the memory enhancement techniques are pretty standard stuff--not bad, but not exceptional, either.There's a chapter on memorizing speeches, and techniques for memorizing faces and names, lists, and dates. Not all of this seems terribly useful, either. It seems far more expeditious simply to write a list down than to spend the time implementing hook-and-peg memory techniques. Memorizing dates will be useful to students, and quickly matching faces with names will help politicians (at least those without a vast staff of underlings to keep track of such things for them), but, really, there isn't all that much useful stuff here. If you want to learn material--not just lists, but information--Mind Mapping techniques (see Tony Buzan's Mind Mapping books) are probably more appropriate.

The for-dummies-and-idiots genre can be useful for rank newcomers; they often gather much information from a wide range of sources into one volume, but they do so in a distinctly superficial manner, and, as is the problem with this book, they do so without providing adequate focus.

Memory is information storage. Information is "anything that comes to you through your senses--sight, hearing, scent, taste, or touch." Some of the incoming information is not retained at all, some is kept temporarily, and some is stored forever. There are also different types of memory. For example, most of us can remember what we've learned, especially skills like how to walk or talk, but we can't remember how we learned it. We simply retain the ability to walk or talk.

Kurland and Lupoff first discuss what is known about how memories are formed and retained. Most people, however, are more interested in recalling what they know, when they need to know it. The bulk of the book offers tips and techniques for doing just that. The authors focus on associations and mnemonics as the most effective ways to recall information.

Associations involve making a mental connection between something familiar, such as the furniture in a room, and new information. A common mnemonic uses the word HOMES as a way to recall the names of the Great Lakes. Kurland and Lupoff provide many examples of these, and other techniques, making it easy for readers to learn what works best for them.

They debunk the notion that memory loss is inevitable with age, saying that while "a little memory loss as you age is natural, [if] your memory for recent events is getting worse and worse, this isn't natural." Readers with rapidly failing memories are advised to contact their physicians.

The authors also provide tips for students for overcoming test anxiety, so that they can better remember what they've learned.

Kurland and Lupoff say that memory is like any other skill--the more you practice, "the more confident and relaxed you will become, and the better your performance will be." Improving Your Memory gives readers all the tools they need to develop or improve their memory skills.

Sandra I. Smith Reviewer

thank michael kurtland and his co-authors for writing this in such a way that it was so much to read and study it.

john godin, second year medical student