Moonwalking with Einstein
The art and science of remembering everything
by Joshua Foer. Published by Penguin www.penguin.co.uk

You must remember this, a kiss is just… ah, what was it again?

Memory is a tricky thing. Ever had to call your own mobile because you can’t remember where you left it? Or walked up and down the street trying to spot where you parked your car? Wouldn’t it be great if we all had memories as good as those memory-champion folk who can recall the order of a shuffled deck of cards after only 30 seconds of study.

The author, Joshua Foer thought so too after covering the 2005 US Memory Championship and watching competitors outdo each other in recalling a 50 line poem, matching 100 photos and names, memorising 300 random words and 1000 random numbers. All very impressive – especially so since the competitors all claimed to have only average memories. Foer takes them up on their contention that anybody can learn their tricks and this book is a recount of his journey from doubting journalist to competitor in the 2006 US Memory Championships.

‘Moonwalking with Einstein’ isn’t a self-help or how-to book – though Foer does cover enough of the MA’s (mental athletes) techniques that you can try them for yourself – rather it’s a trip through the art and history of memory. Along the way he talks to memory specialists from neurologists to commercial memory trainers trying to find out what memory actually is and why it’s so seemingly mercurial. We also visit the memory Palace where Simonides of Ceos is said to have invented the art of memory in 5th Century BC Greece, the OK Plateau (where our brains stop learning when they decide we’re ‘good enough’ at something) and discover how ancient scholars actually used scrolls. We also meet some eccentric MAs and a variety of memory savants from ‘S’ who had to write things down in an effort to prevent himself from remembering too much, the real ‘Rain Man’ and ‘EP’, a retired gentleman who – thanks to a brain infection – can’t form new memories and who’s grandchildren are a daily revelation.

Foer’s style is light and anecdotal without being too superficial. There are plenty of interesting nuggets of information on the current understanding of what memory actually is and how it works interleaved throughout the personal narrative. By the end the reader is really rooting for Foer (and, indeed for the other blindfold and ear muff wearing competitors) sweating it out over the last deck of cards. Does Foer win? Does he really end up with a perfect memory? Does he become a ‘super journalist’ who never has to take notes? I won’t spoil it for you but here’s a quote:

“A few nights after the championship I went out to dinner with a couple of friends, took the subway home and only remembered as I was walking in the door to my parent’s house that I’d driven a car to dinner. Not only had I forgotten where I’d parked it, I’d forgotten that I had it.”

Now, where are those Post-Its?

The Psychopath Test
A journey through the madness industry
by Jon Ronson. Published by Picador www.picador.com

Are you mad? You probably are you know. At least by the standards of the DSM – Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – published by the American Psychiatric Association. It’s a checklist of the symptoms of every recognised mental disorder. The first edition in 1952 ran to 64 pages. The current edition (IV) has 886 pages so there’s a good chance most people reading this will fall into some category or other.

In fact, statistically speaking, at least 10 of you are psychopaths.

The dark appeal of psychopaths (or sociopaths, there’s no difference in the definition) in modern media is obviously the main lure of this book. From ‘Criminal Minds’ to slasher movies, the emotionless killing machine seems to exert an undeniable magnetism on the popular imagination. Even the current fashion for Vampires can fall under this description for what are Vampires but psychopaths with superpowers?

The eponymous ‘psychopath test’, more correctly called the Hare PCL-R Checklist, is a 20 point list used to diagnose the 1% of the population who classify as ‘psychotic’. For anyone who wants to check their friends or work colleagues against the list, you can find it on page 101 when you’re flipping through the book in Hodges Figgis or Easons.

For Jon Ronson – who previously brought you ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’ – this exploration of what it means to be mad in the 21st Century starts when he’s asked to investigate a mysterious book sent to academics throughout the world. Ronson soon finds the new investigation dovetailing with his previous experience of the consequences of casually referring to a cult leader as a psychopath. Though it starts out reading like a detective drama (is the mysterious book a complex code, elaborate hoax or the work of a madman?), ‘The Psychopath Test’ soon settles into the more approachable documentary format of interviews with several psychiatrists as well as several alleged psychopaths. Is the man who claims to have faked madness to get a lenient jail sentence only to find himself locked up in a mental hospital indefinitely, really a danger to society? Is the multi-millionaire living in a mansion with gold lion statues a psychopath or just a ruthless businessman? Is there a difference?

These questions, and others, lead Ronson into the wider but equally murky waters of what – and who – defines mental illness at all. He finds uneasy bedfellows in the Scientologists who campaign against the massive scope of the DSM definitions. The psychiatrists – the people *defining* sanity – often seem to have more than one or two screws lose themselves – dosing prisoners with LSD, massive electric shocks and holding naked group therapy sessions.

‘The Psychopath Test’ is a wide ranging book, though, in taking on the subject of the entire psychiatric industry, the scope may have proven to be a little too wide with numerous avenues left insufficiently explored. None the less, it is a fascinating and scary read though Ronson himself comes across as somewhat ambivalent (perhaps inevitably so given the ambivalence so many of the psychiatrists display). On one hand, his writing implies heavy criticism of psychiatry and the DSM as too all-encompassing and pandering to the pharmaceutical industry. On the other, as though fearful of being too closely tied to such ostensible allies as the Scientologists, he shies away from their more extreme condemnation. That aside, the only real flaw is that the book barely touches on one intriguing theme – the preponderance of mental illness in the captains of industry and politics. In one interview Martha Stout from Harvard Medical School, says “The higher up the ladder you go, the greater the number of sociopaths you’ll find there”, while Bob Hare – who developed the PCL-R checklist – doesn’t think the individual psychopath murderer is the greatest danger. He says “Serial killers ruin families. Corporate, political or religious psychopaths ruin societies”.

These themes would make a fascinating book in themselves. I hope somebody writes it.

Gravity
by Brian Clegg. Published by Duckworth Overlook www.ducknet.co.uk

Gravity is a curious beast. So weak that you can overcome a whole planetfull of the stuff with the energy in the muscles of your legs yet so powerful it controls the movements of worlds and stars and galaxies. It’s presence and effects in our lives are so ubiquitous we give this odd force no more thought than a fish gives to water.

The ancient Greeks were the first to grapple with gravity and Aristotle’s theory of ‘natural tendencies’ – a rock is attracted more to the earth than, say, a feather, because they are the same element – held sway until the middle ages and Copernicus and Galileo’s run-ins with the church. Clegg intertwines potted biographies of these great thinkers – at least where they are most relevant to their ideas – and continues the back-stories theme into modern times with Einstein’s ‘warped space’ take on gravity.

Many readers will be familiar with the story of Arthur Eddington’s observations of star positions during the 1919 total eclipse which were the pivotal proof for Einstein’s theory of warped space. Fewer perhaps will be aware of how carefully Eddington (a staunch supporter of Einstein) cherry-picked results to support the theory. Of all the photos taken by Eddington’s team on that cloudy day, only two were usable and only one was clear enough to show the expected shift in star positions. A simultaneous exhibition to Brazil gave very ambiguous readings. Overall, there was not enough data to either support or refute Einstein’s theory and it was only Eddington’s enthusiastic promotion that propelled Einstein to front-page fame. Bad science that just happened to be right!

Modern architects of String Theory don’t fare quite so well in the back story department (academia just isn’t as excitingly life-threatening as it was in the 16^th Century) but here Clegg is not afraid to cover alternatives to that modern paradigm such as a Quantum Loop Gravity. I’d have like to see more exploration of these alternatives to string theory – which has produced no testable predictions in 30 years and which Clegg likens more to religion than science – but at least the reader is left in no doubt that modern gravity theory is far less monolithic than is sometimes presented.

Though pitched at a resolutely ‘popular’ level, ‘Gravity’ is not as science lite as some. Clegg is not afraid to throw in an occasional equation when needed (though it’s not necessary to solve them to enjoy the book) and you will also need to pay attention a bit during the latter chapters covering quantum theory, multiple dimensions, and Branes. I’m still not sure I’ve got my head round the concept of ‘spacial atoms’ that are not physical but just the ‘logical components of space’ (seriously physicists; math is a powerful tool but you’re starting to sound like you’re smoking the stuff. Maybe take a couple of grams of experiment to go along with those tons of theory?).

Here’s a quick quantum joke:
Why is M Theory like an exasperated parent?
Oh, becauseitjusis OK!
If you understand the joke, you’ll enjoy ‘Gravity’. If you don’t understand the joke don’t worry; you will after you’ve read ‘Gravity’.