Civil Engineer

Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
ONE - THE SMARTEST MAN IS HARD TO FIND
TWO - THE MAN WHO REMEMBERED TOO MUCH
THREE - THE EXPERT EXPERT
FOUR - THE MOST FORGETFUL MAN IN THE WORLD
FIVE - THE MEMORY PALACE
SIX - HOW TO MEMORIZE A POEM
SEVEN - THE END OF REMEMBERING
EIGHT - THE OK PLATEAU
NINE - THE TALENTED TENTH
TEN - THE LITTLE RAIN MAN IN ALL OF US
ELEVEN -THE U.S. MEMORY CHAMPIONSHIP

EPILOGUE
Acknowledgements
NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

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First published in 2011 by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Joshua Foer, 2011
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LIBRARYOF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Foer, Joshua.
Moonwalking with Einstein : the art and science of remembering everything / Joshua Foer. p.
cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-101-47597-3
1. Mnemonics. 2. Memory. I. Title.
BF385.F64 2011
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For Dinah: Everything.

There were no other survivors.
Family members arriving at the scene of the fifth-century-B.C.banquet
hall catastrophe pawed at the debris for signs of their loved ones—rings,
sandals, anything that would allow them to identify their kin for proper
burial.
Minutes earlier, the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos had stood to
deliver an ode in celebration of Scopas, a Thessalian nobleman. As
Simonides sat down, a messenger tapped him on the shoulder. Two
young men on horseback were waitingoutside, anxious to tell him
something. He stood up again and walked out the door. At the very
moment he crossed the threshold, the roof of the banquet hall collapsed
in a thundering plume of marble shards and dust.
He stood now before a landscape of rubble and entombed bodies. The
air, which had been filled with boisterous laughter moments before, was
smoky and silent. Teams of rescuers setto work frantically digging
through the collapsed building. The corpses they pulled out of the
wreckage were mangled beyond recognition. No one could even say for
sure who had been inside. One tragedy compounded another.
Then something remarkable happened that would change forever how
people thought about their memories. Simonides sealed his senses to
the chaos around him and reversed time...