It all began, as many things did in this modern spurt of civilization, in ancient Greece. Simonedes was just another philosopher at a banquet, chilling out with his friends and quaffing down some wine and olives. The banquet was large and everyone was having a good time, when suddenly a volcano erupted/earthquake happened/mass slaughter ensued and the banquet hall, along with all its inhabitants, was destroyed. Simonedes and a few others survived. 
 When the relatives of the dead came to take away the remains of their loved, no one new who was who because the corpses were disfigured beyond recognition. Strangely however, Simonedes discovered that with a little bit of effort, he could recall exactly where all the guests were at the moment the destruction happened with near perfect clarity. In this way he hit upon a neat trick to 'remember everything'. 
 When I read a book, what do I hope will stay with me a year later? If it's a work of nonfiction, the thesis, maybe, if the book has one. A few savory details, perhaps. If it's fiction, the broadest outline of the plot, something about the main characters (at least their names), and an overall critical judgment about the book. Even these are likely to fade. 
 Moonwalking with Einstein is primarily a book about memory. How much do we forget in this day and age? If you are like me, then you definitely forget a lot. I can't keep track of appointments and to do list unless i make a note of them, not cause i'm a flake, well maybe i am a little, but simply because there is just some much to think of. We've drowned ourselves in quantity and outsourced our memories to electronic devices. The machines store our knowledge and we mine them as and when our intelligence requires it. 
 The book isn't far off when it boasts to talk about 'the art and science of remembering everything'. There is an art and science to it, that much is plain. But it isn't easy to master. To Illustrate Joshua Foer looks at sporting activity right out of the pages of C.S. Lewis; where hordes of earnest competitors set out to fight it out to see who can remember the best. They memorize multiple card packs, epic poems and random lists of binary, numbers and words. 
 Now this may seem strangely pointless. Sure, if a bunch of eccentrics want to get together and do that then good luck to em, right? Foer makes it clear that this isn't a book about helping you to remember better. Neither one that promises you gratuitous gains at the expense of five minutes a day of effort. The book is about Foer's dabbling in memory sport. A chance visit to a memory sporting event intrigues him and before he knows it, he is training for the US memory championship. 
 Aside from all the crazy characters he runs into and the interest he piques in the reader in memory sport what stuck with me most is the smattering of tips and tricks i'm left with to improve my memory. When it comes down to its bones, like a lot of modern pop-science and non-fiction, the book is a lot of salad dressing around a few key messages. And the key-est (i made that up) message i come away with is the construction and use of the Memory Palace. 
 The Memory Palace is purely a mental thing. The trick is remarkably simple, and akin to methods we often use sub-consciously already. Say you want to remember a list. You confer each of the items on your list with a unique, very memorable image. And then you lay them along a familiar path or in key locations in a mental landscape of your childhood home, or grandparents house. 
 They key science here is that the human brain is more capable of remembering and recalling visual and spacial data than anything else. This method is insanely effective. I was studying for my Project management paper while reading this and easily converted quite a few tedious lists into items in memory palaces and remembered them with ease at my paper, Alhamdulillah. The only problem of course is that once you've built a palace, and committed something to memory in it, cleaning it out for reuse can be a tricky business. Foer mentions the possibility of this, but does not tell you how. 
 Another is that the more things you need to remember, the more palaces you'll have to find. And the more buildings you'll have to be familiar with. Foer in preparation for the US Memory Championships, visited several new buildings in order to remember the hellish data he was about to download into his brain. 
 For the rest of us, memory palaces can be of most help during exams. At least thats the best use iv put them to so far. There are also ways and means of remembering numbers and poems and prose verbatim. The former is a matter of assigning sounds to each number and then forming these sounds into syllables and visual symbols to corroborate with numbers you want to remember. Its less complicated than it sounds. 
 But ultimately, how many things must we remember? I for one feel that i lose most of what goes into my head, and am only left with a vague imprint of books that i have read. That's why putting your impressions into words my help. And that's one of the reasons i like reviewing a book after I've read it. Whether it really helps me retain a little more of it, or if it simply provides the illusion of retention and placates my ego, i am yet to figure out. 
 Once upon a time, there was nothing to do with thoughts except remember them. There was no alphabet to transcribe them in, no paper to set them down upon. Anything that had to be preserved had to be preserved in memory. Any story that would be retold, any idea that would be transmitted, any piece of information that would be conveyed, first had to be remembered. 
 That meant that the ancient Greeks had smashing memories. And the techniques and tricks they developed to sharpen them were given the same level of importance as other knowledge. What students were taught they were also taught to remember. And the human brain is such that we are far more intelligent if we remember things than if we have to google stuff every five minutes or so in the middle of discussing something with a friend. 
 We have made 'a switch from "intensive" to "extensive" reading' that has helped us know more, but remember less.