100 Books Like Marking the Mind

This is one of the best critical surveys of the relationship between memory and history I have encountered. Geoffrey Cubitt is concerned with memory as both personal and social, along with the various dynamics between them. The book is interdisciplinary in conception and operation, exploring how history and memory inform one another in complementary and contradictory ways, and how both cross and re-cross varying scales of past/present relations. Regardless of whether readers approach this book from the perspective of memory or history, they will find it a comprehensive assessment of their complex interaction.

In this book Max Silverman focuses on the remembering and understanding of extreme violence and terror, arguing against the tendency to separate different histories from each other along ethno-cultural lines. In countering this tendency, he conceives of the present not as an isolated moment but rather as a composite structure made up of different temporal traces from the past, lying in varying layers of visibility within the present, each of them capable of mediating, and being transformed by, another. Silverman builds a cogent case for the ways in which history, memory and imagination overlap and interact. After reading this book, it is difficult, if not impossible, to mount a defence of memory as authentic, sovereign, and autonomous. 

A predominant amount of work in memory studies has focused on national memory cultures. The shift in this anthology is towards small, local or regional memories and towards vernacular sites of remembering. Its contributors attend in the main to personal and familial forms of memory, and thus on the narrative modes and media associated with them. The chapters cover a fascinating range of topics, making for a diverse volume united by a key preoccupation with the locatedness of memory, rather than referring broadly across a whole national context or to a huge sweeping range of memory and remembering. This is a very welcome shift, bringing to the fore everyday objects of memory that have tended to be less predominant—hence ‘peripheral’, in the sense of being swept aside or overshadowed. Redressing this allows for a more complex understanding of relations between public and private memory and remembering practices, across varying temporal… show more.

All the books being recommended on this topic see memory and remembering as being structured and directed by the views and perspectives of the social groups to which people belong. Ever since Bartlett and Halbwachs, we have come to see memory as in many ways moulded by particular mental schemata and configurations associated with the various groups that exist within a social whole, yet the notion of collective memory is beset with problems: problems of exaggeration, reification, functionalism, and more. It is therefore fitting that in this edited collection the work of Halbwach in particular is regarded critically, and extended historically, while also being recognised as providing the necessary starting point: "social groups construct their own images of the world by constantly shaping and reshaping versions of the past" (p. 3).

As we saw with Danziger, the social frameworks of memory as well as the kinds of memory being actively… show more.

Drowse Draaisma is a memory specialist, and this lucid, eloquent and humorous book celebrates the rich and fruitful pleasures of memory in later life (and takes the sting out of the natural forgetfulness that comes as we grow older). It combines science, psychology, anecdotes, advice, and it is above all a work of spirit and optimism.  

On some evenings, I like to curl up in bed with a brain-squeezing puzzle.

What I appreciated about this activity book are the various game genres and degrees of difficulty. This allowed me to select a puzzle based on my interest and focus level of the moment.

Overall, it’s a hearty collection of challenges for anyone who loves getting lost in riddles, mazes, and numbers.

The author immersed himself in the world of memory experts and describes how he went from (metaphorical) memory rags to memory riches – eventually winning a prestigious memory contest. This book takes the mystery out of how to learn vast bodies of information; Foer describes learning devices that anyone can use to put their memory on steroids.

Dominic O'Brien won the inaugural World Memory Championship in 1991, which I organised jointly with Tony Buzan. Everyone needs memory power, from the youngest school kid to the most ancient of veterans. Without memory, you cannot come up with anything creative. Dominic has the ability to remember thousands of binary digits in half an hour or remember an entire park of cards in mere seconds. There is no one better than eight-times World Memory Champion Dominic O'Brien to guide you on the right path. 

Tony Buzan was a genius who discovered the secret of bringing out the innate genius in others. This all-round manual illustrates all aspects of Tony’s teachings which can transform your mental power in every aspect of your life. At university Tony realised that there was no handbook or operations manual for the human brain, so he decided to write it himself. This is it. 

In the mid-90s, competing and sometimes absurd psychological ideas were everywhere, part of both popular culture and psychology. I was young and in search of answers in a sprawling sea of facts muddled with misinformation. The Myth of Repressed Memory was revelatory for me.

The authors detailed the fashionable but fictitious ideas about repressed memory and the horrifying results of unproven theories guiding therapies. They methodically and authoritatively asserted and separated facts from fiction. It showed me what could happen if therapists were guided and swayed by fantastical but fabricated theories.

It made me more certain I wanted to help; more sure that the better answers were found in science; and more determined that listening can and should be guided by critical thinking.