Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

This is a wonderful book on many levels--it is amusing, educational, thought-provoking, and least of all, the story of Mr. Foer's rise in the memory contestant world is a good story.
he starts the book off with a description of memory methods, like the 'memory palace', which is a method known in olden times, according to Foer, first described by Simonides of Ceos around 500 B.C. The idea is to convert concepts into distinctive images-—the more lurid, the better (I won't go into them here, but the author provides many examples of what can be used)—-which they mentally place into actual locations they know well. Thus some people can memorize the order of a deck of cards in half a minute, look at 100 people and learn their names in 15 minutes--to name a few feats.
Mr. Foer became interested in high-recall individuals when he covered the U.S. Memory Championship as a journalist. He became curious about what drove contestants to master such a seemingly arcane skill--and how did they do it? Were they born with it, or did they practice, or was it a combination of the two? He wondered if he could do it, too. "Moonwalking With Einstein" chronicles the intense training he undertook to himself compete in the U.S. Memory Championship, introducing us along the way to memory researchers, mental athletes, and a few individuals with the innate ability to remember nearly everything.
Over the next year, Mr. Foer practiced daily, learning to expand his memory capabilities. Then he returned for more testing. His digit span had doubled, to around 18. His ability to remember the names of people met at a cocktail party was also much improved. Still, many parts of his memory were just average, and he was not immune from forgetting where he left his car--which was his baseline (proving hope for all of us).
The book jacket reveals this—-Mr. Foer eventually won the U.S. Memory Championship. Through the book we get to travel with him on this unlikely journey, and his entertaining treatment of memory as both sport and science is spot on. Mr. Foer introduces us not just to remarkably people but to a few who can't recall much at all (due to particular brain injuries).
In the end I agreed that human memory is complicated (ok, truthfully, I already knew that). "Moonwalking With Einstein" is an uplifting look at the whole concept. It shows that with motivation, focus and a few clever tricks, our minds can be taught to do rather extraordinary things.