A New York Times Notable Book: A psychologist's "gripping and thought-provoking" look at how and why our brains sometimes fail us (Steven Pinker, author of How the Mind Works).In this intriguing study, Harvard psychologist Daniel L. Schacter explores the memory miscues that occur in everyday life, placing them into seven categories: absent-mindedness, transience, blocking, misattribution, suggestibility, bias, and persistence. Illustrating these concepts w...

Memory. There may be nothing more important to human beings than our ability to enshrine experience and recall it. While philosophers and poets have elevated memory to an almost mystical level, psychologists have struggled to demystify it. Now, according to Daniel Schacter, one of the most distinguished memory researchers, the mysteries of memory are finally yielding to dramatic, even revolutionary, scientific breakthroughs. Schacter explains how and why it may change our understanding of ...

Remember things better by understanding how your memory works. If memory is a simple thing, why does it so often go awry? Why is forgetting so common? How can you be certain about something you remember--and be wrong about it? Why is it so difficult to remember people's names? How can you study hard for an exam but not be able to recall the material on the test? In Why We Forget, Dr. Andrew Budson and Dr. Elizabeth Kensinger address these questions and more, using...

Remember things better by understanding how your memory works.If memory is a simple thing, why does it so often go awry? Why is forgetting so common? How can you be certain about something you remember—and be wrong about it? Why is it so difficult to remember people's names? How can you study hard for an exam but not be able to recall the material on the test? In Why We Forget, Dr. Andrew Budson and Dr. Elizabeth Kensinger address these questions and more,...

Daniel L. Schacter, chairman of Harvard University’s Psychology Department and a leading expert on memory, has developed the Trst framework that describes the basic memory miscues we all encounter. Just like the seven deadly sins, the seven memory sins appear routinely in everyday life. Although we may hate these difTculties, as Schacter notes, they’re surprisingly vital to a keen mind.Schacter, whose previous trade book, SEARCHING FOR MEMORY, was called “splendidly lucid” (The New ...

Richard Semon was a German evolutionary biologist who wrote, during the first decade of the twentieth century, two fascinating analyses of the workings of human memory which were ahead of their time. Although these have been virtually unknown to modern researchers, Semon's work has been rediscovered during the past two decades and has begun to have an influence on the field. This book not only examines Semon's contribution to memory research, but also tells the story of an extraordinary li...

“The father of cognitive neuroscience” illuminates the past, present, and future of the mind-brain problemHow do neurons turn into minds? How does physical “stuff”―atoms, molecules, chemicals, and cells―create the vivid and various worlds inside our heads? The problem of consciousness has gnawed at us for millennia. In the last century there have been massive breakthroughs that have rewritten the science of the brain, and yet the puzzles faced by the ancient Greeks...

**"[Oliver Wyman's] skillful, nuanced performance is enough to keep listeners from tossing their earbuds aside in despair...This isn't easy listening, but it's essential for anyone concerned about humanity's future." — AudioFile MagazineThis program includes a foreword read by the author.Thirty years ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change. Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to play itself ...

From the author of Against Empathy comes a different kind of happiness book, one that shows us how suffering is an essential source of both pleasure and meaning in our lives.Why do we so often seek out physical pain and emotional turmoil? We go to movies that make us cry, or scream, or gag. We poke at sores, eat spicy foods, immerse ourselves in hot baths, run marathons. Some of us even seek out pain and humiliation in sexual role-play. Where do these seem...

For fans of James Clear, Nassim Taleb, and Malcolm Gladwell: Stop being someone who could succeed and become someone who predictably should succeed by using a revolutionary “probability hacking” framework to increase your odds of success.Every goal that you’re pursuing has two hidden numbers attached to it—a probability of success and a probability of failure. Whether you’re trying to start a business, run a marathon, get a promotion, earn a pilot’s license, grow a...

On March 14, 1889, Susan La Flesche received her medical degree―becoming the first Native American doctor in US history. She earned her degree thirty-one years before women could vote and thirty-five years before Indians could become citizens in their own country.By age twenty-six, this fragile but indomitable Indian woman became the doctor to her tribe. Overnight, she acquired 1,244 patients scattered across 1,350 square miles of rolling countryside with few roads...

The Job is an early work by American novelist Sinclair Lewis.It is considered an early declaration of the rights of working women. The focus is on the main character, Una Golden, and her desire to establish herself in a legitimate occupation while balancing the eventual need for marriage. The story takes place in the early 1900-1920s and takes Una from a small Pennsylvania town to New York. Forced to work due to family illness, Una shows a talent for the traditiona...