skimmed some of this a bit too dense at times but also fascinating ( )

I found it interesting but at times a bit bogged down with the author's own research. He did deal with a number of bigger society issues as well such as the "truth" of memoir, the conflict over recovered memories of sexual abuse - real or fabricated, and the role of memory and story telling for the elderly for themselves and for society.

I started this book some time ago, soon after it came out, probably, in 1996. That was during the height of the recovered memory movement, and this volume is partly a response to that hysteria from a professional psychologist with an interest in memory. The author reviews current theories on memory from both a clinical and a experimental psychology viewpoint. He has several interesting stories to tell, about examples of limited memory loss for certain classes of words, or pictures, and the limited evidence for complete repression of memory. The issue of the difficulty that people have with citing the source for a memory is particularly interesting - Ellen is always asking me how I know something and I cannot tell her. It may cause problems with attribution of credit in scholarly works, however. ( )

Interesting collection of cases to make a point.: I found this book a very interesting reading, and surely learned some new facts. This book stimulated my eager to reflect upon what a delicate and intricated concept memory is. I particularly dislike all the "art" references the author makes in every chapter of the book. I really think this was an unnecessary complement that in my opinion not always makes a good pedagogic analogy. The book format was a little bit square, but I suppose that helps to order ideas in one's brain. Anyway, the book is really interesting and the cases are very well selected, though I personally don't like to rely that much on induction, but also I know that sometimes this is inevitable.