Why We Remember by Charan Ranganath

I requested a preview copy of WHY WE REMEMBER by Charan Ranganath after reading his guest essay which explains the difference between little “f” forgetting (fairly common retrieval failure) and capital “F” Forgetting (lost or completely gone memories) in The New York Times. Ranganath has spent decades studying memory mechanisms and is currently a Professor at the Center for Neuroscience and Department of Psychology and director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California at Davis. His new book is subtitled “Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters” and he writes in detail about how the brain works and the various experiments in his research. The content is fascinating (e.g., how false memories are built), but complex at times. Ranganath emphasizes that “your remembering self is constantly - and profoundly - shaping your future by influencing just about every decision you make.” He includes extensive notes (roughly fifteen percent of the text) and bibliographic references (another twenty percent) in support of his arguments. This text also made me think about a much older book from Joshua Foer called Moonwalking with Einstein which first introduced me to the method of loci or creating a “memory palace.” Although sometimes academic in tone, WHY WE REMEMBER received a starred review from Publishers Weekly (“Approachable and enlightening, this is worth seeking out.”).