Many of the mnemonic techniques Doctor Higbee describes are ancient and their refinements centuries old. Many of them precede the development and wide use of written language by humans as an aid to memory. The advantage of this book over other works on how to improve your memory is that he not only introduces the techniques of memory training, but also backs up the techniques by citing research studies that indicate which technique has been most effective depending on what information is to be memorized. Since this edition was published in 1996 the research is not the most up to date, but it is still handy to have so many citations to back up the information.

He also points out that the techniques are not a substitute for study. They are an aid to recall what has been studied. There is still the necessity of study, learning to use the techniques, and repetition to memorize the subject. And while the mnemonic devices are not a substitute for critical thinking, critical thinking and analysis depend on knowing the facts. ( )

This book is really, really easy to read and enjoyable - still, it took me a billion years. It goes through a plethora of memory techniques and is really well-written. I highly recommend this for all who would like to improve their memory in a variety of ways, for a bunch of reasons. ( )

Overall this is a great book to help you grasp how your memory functions and ways to help remember things. It's biggest asset is on the study of memory and it's how's and why's. When it comes to the mnemonic practices it does go in depth on the methods, but can overwhelm you fast to the point where it seems a lot to try right away. I can see how a couple of further reads and practice would make this a must need book for anyone to improve their memory. ( )

Overall this is a great book to help you grasp how your memory functions and ways to help remember things. It's biggest asset is on the study of memory and it's how's and why's. When it comes to the mnemonic practices it does go in depth on the methods, but can overwhelm you fast to the point where it seems a lot to try right away. I can see how a couple of further reads and practice would make this a must need book for anyone to improve their memory. ( )

Although, for price reasons, I bought the older edition of the book which was slightly dated, I can honestly say that this book was very good and helpful. I have read that there are classrooms that use this book, as a text book for memory and mnemonics and after reading it I can see why. You can think of this book in two sections. Section one gives a complete overview of how our memory work sharing some very helpful studies to back up the assumptions. The second section of the books goes through some of the various mnemonic methods and how to use them, and also some of the studies that are used to show their effectiveness. Now I will say that this book is very good for trying to understand your memory and does give several helpful ways to improve it. I think that if this is your goal this should be one of your core books to read. ( )