Customer Reviews

Your Memory: How It Works And How To Improve It

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
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2 star:		(3)
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WHAT DOES THIS BOOK CONTAIN? This book is an excellent resource for those who are looking for answers like why digits in excess of about 7 are hard to remember after hearing them only once, why a name so familiar cannot be remembered sometimes, why is it easier to remember the colors of the spectrum by remembering the phrase Richard-Of-York-Gave-Battle-In-Vain, etc. The book contains enough information on how your memory works (not enough for a memory researcher though) and also contains references to other papers which a interested reader may consult for further information. The book also has effective ways of learning something, like studying two different subjects in two different rooms to reduce interference, making things that need to be learnt meaningful (like the spelling of Arnold Sch-War-Zen-Egg-Er), etc. Finally, the ending chapters contain the following memory techniques (mnemonic): link and story mnemonics, loci mnemonic, peg mnemonic, and phonetic mnemonic. It also contains a chapter on remembering peoples' names and faces.

WHAT CAN BE LEARNT FROM THE BOOK? Using the effective study techniques and mnemonic techniques from the book, you can make effective use of your memory and will not forget things as easily as you used to. You can learn a whole year's calendar by remembering only a 12 digit number. You can learn the value of "pi" up to as many digits as you want to. You can learn a list of up to 100 or more items on a list. You can put all the telephone numbers of your relatives and friends in your head. You might not have to carry your PDA, provided you use your PDA solely for information retrieval.

WHAT'S THE BOTTOM LINE? No memory book will improve your short term memory from 7 items to 7+ items, provided you are a normal person. All memory books contain techniques to make effective memory usage - do not expect to remember what you were doing yesterday at, say 2.27 PM studying all the memory books in the world and applying all the mnemonic techniques in the world. If you want something like that, travel into the future and get electronic chips implanted in your brain. This book does not contain enough examples on application of the mnemonic techniques. I suggest you get Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas's "The Memory Book" in addition to this book for more applications and examples of the mnemonic techniques.

I read this book before I read "The Memory Book" by Lorayne and Lucas and found that much of the same material is covered in both, but in entirely different ways. It's really an "either or" decision between the two based on what you want to gain.

Personally, between the two books, I prefer Higbee's book because of his thorough examination of memory, its history, case studies, analogies, and anecdotes. I find it to be inspiring to see its great applications and that most people benefit greatly from these techniques. This style helped me to retain enthsiasm to learn and yet was written in a plain and often humorous style.

"The Memory Book" has its own benefits. It lays everything out in easy to understand instructions and lists a few dorky "party tricks" you can do with some of the techniques (though who's really going to entertain friends with "memory feats"?). Lorayne and Lucas do offer something not offerred in Higbee's book: short chapters dedicated to using memory techniques for specific tasks such as learning music, stock symbols, sports plays, or locations. These chapters make up a small portion of the book and could easily be read off the shelf at a local bookstore.

To sum up, both books offer up basically the same exact memory techniques. It's up to your own learning style to decide which one you prefer.

There are many books about memory and memory improvement on the marketplace. Most of them tend to fall into one of two categories. Either a treatise on the brain, how memories are formed, the types of memories and the basics of recall or a treatise of memorization techniques that have been used over the centuries. The first type offers great information but very little useful advice for someone seeking to improve their memory. The second type offers lots of techniques that may work in one situation or another but don't give enough information on how they work to allow you to adapt them to your own personal needs.

This book offers a nice medium ground. It offers information on the various types of memories and current scientific research into memory and then follows up with several types of techniques to enable you to remember different things. The advantage to this book is that since it gives you both pieces information in a concise, integrated work it provides you with the framework to design and/or adjust the techniques to your personal needs.

The book does not offer any new mnemonic techniques or any groundbreaking work in that area. However, I found that by understanding how the techniques work and how to work with them I was able to adapt the systems and/or use multiple systems to quickly memorize material that had been problematic before.

The book covers basic systems from the common Loci system that is quick and easy to learn to the much more flexible and complex phonic system that requires much more study and practice to use effectively. While these are not new, a work that details the manner in which they work and encourages you to adapt the system to your needs is new. This is definitely one of the best single books that I have read on the subject and was immediately useful.

The only thing that I did not like about the book was the great multitude of references to other works, systems, and detailed applications of the system to various specific situations. The references are not a problem in themselves as they do not break up the flow of the book and are summarized at the end of the book in an easy to read fashion. The problem is that while they point out where information came from they do not point out where to get your hands on the information. This has not been a problem for me in the past as I have generally not really cared to follow up to the original source of footnotes and references. But this book was so well done that I found myself often wanting to follow up with the references and not able to locate them. For example, in Chapter 12 he mentions a book and a game that contain 1,200 Bible verses set out with mnemonic devices to help learn them and where they are located in the Bible. After a couple of examples to whet your appetite the only information in the reference material related to the footnote is where the book can be purchased. Not even a mention of the book's name if one should desire to purchase it. No mention of the game name nor where one might find it. Of course it may not be too difficult to locate if you had a name for the game or book or anything else other than just the publisher.

This book is a comprehensive treatment of useful memory systems. It claims to seek a balance between the "popular" memory books and the archaic, academic memory literature. This is a goal which it successfully achieves.

There are many great things about this book. It covers all the main mnemonic systems. The author provides up to date reviews of relevant literature to comment upon the effectiveness of the systems. He does this in a very clear, easy going style which makes the book enjoyable to read, unlike the hefty academic memory journals. The great thing about this book is that it doesn't hype "Super power memory" or "Photographic memory" or any such nonsense. It teaches you not only the techniques but the way in which to correctly apply techniques. Thus, you know what the mnemonic systems are and when to use them.

To be honest I can't think of anything that I dislike about this book. The author adopts a very no nonsense approach and I can heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about how to improve their memory.

I used the ideas in this book and scored very high on a short term/long term memory test I needed for a scholarship; trouble was, the lower I got, the more money I would get. Darn it!!! By using the various practical methods in this book, I did extremely well, much better than my typical ADD mind usually does. So, I was hoisted by my own petard, but hey, that was one test, and these techniques last as long as your brain functions well. Highly recommended. No hyperbole here. Just straight empirical explanations of memory enhancing methods, followed by "how to" develop and use the methods themselves.

I thought Kenneth Higbee's book was a great analysis of memory and different techniques of how to improve it. After reading this book I memorized a chapter summary of every chapter in the New Testament, and I can tell you what day of the week you were born on if you give me the date. A+

I have dozens of memory books in my shelf. I had been eyeing this book for sometime on the site but somehow didn't have a good feeling about it. But impressed by the reviews written here, i finally decided to add this book to my array. But i was very disappointed.

This book is more of a research work. The author gives account of his ardous and meticulous research carried out in the field of memeory. But this book doesn't adequately teach a layman the application of various tools of memory in detail. The book is full of stuff like experiments conducted by the author on students, etc. etc.

Moreover, this book is too wordy. There are some excellent and far better books in market which concentrate more on the practical aspects of memeory techiniques rather than laying too much stress on research.

Buy this only if you need research information on memeory. Harry Lorayne is the king of memeory. Try books written by him.

This is a great book if your trying to learn more about memory. I am doing a science fair project and I looked on many other sites, and none of them have as good of information as they do on this book! You could really learn a lot from this and if you ever have time, you should really check out this book! Memory in my belief is fascinating so this is something I personally would reccomend.

Many times, I have recommended this book as a starting point for learning of memory. First chapter "What can you expect from your memory? Ten myths" explains a lot about this book. Kenneth Higbee gives clear, precise, and psychological examples of memory, and memory functions. Kenneth does adhere to the psychological aspects of memory and backs up his claims with his chapter notes. Kenneth claimed to have read some 800 scientific papers on memory in the construction of this book. Kenneth goes deep into mnemonics and other memory tricks throughout this book and anyone wishing to know much on memory should read this book. There are many good memory books -some I have reviewed- that are excellent records on the subject of memory. After having read many memory books I still enjoy Kenneth's point of view, however there are many other very good memory books on the market. Other persons might need an alternate view on other aspects of memory, as I did.

In closing, Kenneth's book is exceptional and outstanding. In addition, this book exceeded my expectations for a "memory and how it works." I would refer to the previous reviews of this book because they are very correct in their separate summaries of this book. This book is special in many ways: pure information, references, memory techniques, history, just to name a few. Persons cannot fully explain this book in a limited review because of the sheer wealth of information contained in this publication. Sheer richness contained in a spectacular book.

I thoughts the book presented an unrealistic view of memory. I noticed that the book has been out for a couple of decades and thought it might be a good source to improve my memory. I'm not sure that it has been updated since its creation. I decided to go back to school and wanted some assistance in my classes and help in studying. I diodn't find it to be practical in the long run. I feel guiltly about not giving it the ratings of the other reviewers but I must be reasistic.