Bill Gates recommends Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

General Memory Chat
1

Get ready for a new influx of mnemonists. Bill Gates just highlighted Josh Foer’s book
in his blogpost “5 summer books and other things to do at home”. His recommendations typically drive a lot of book sales.

https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Summer-Books-2020

4 Likes
2

I posted this before I saw your post, so I’ll move my link into a comment here. It’s another article that mentions it. :slight_smile:

“13 books Bill Gates recommends you should read this summer”

7. Moonwalking with Einstein, by Joshua Foer

In 2006 Foer won the USA Memory Championship, a tournament that asks participants to memorise numbers, names, faces and more. His book details his experience working with “mental athletes”, who helped train his mind to quickly recall facts.

“If you’re looking to work on a new skill, you could do worse than learning to memorise things,” Gates wrote on his blog.

2 Likes
3

Awesome.

I already said this in Johannes’ livestream but I think memory and mental calculation sports are going to grow significantly in the near future. More and more people are on the internet every day and I’ve noticed how different smaller communities have grown the last few years because of the exposure the internet gave them. Memory and mental calculation seem to follow the same direction which is great. I used to livestream mental calculation myself on twitch and I hope that others will too.

4 Likes
4

I assume this will be true for the 5 summer books that he lists and that the video focuses on:

  1. The Choice , by Dr. Edith Eva Eger
  2. Cloud Atlas , by David Mitchell
  3. The Ride of a Lifetime , by Bob Iger
  4. The Great Influenza , by John M. Barry
  5. Good Economics for Hard Times , by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo

If you can call being listed as the second book under “Other books worth reading” getting highlighted… I’d call that also mentioned.

Moonwalking with Einstein , by Joshua Foer . If you’re looking to work on a new skill, you could do worse than learning to memorize things. Foer is a science writer who got interested in how memory works, and why some people seem to have an amazing ability to recall facts. He takes you inside the U.S. Memory Championship—yes, that’s a real thing—and introduces you to the techniques that, amazingly, allowed him to win the contest one year.