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Memory

Fragments of a Modern History

Memory

Fragments of a Modern History

Picture your twenty-first birthday. Did you have a party? If so, do you remember who was there? Now step back: how clear are those memories? Should we trust them to be accurate, or is there a chance that you’re remembering incorrectly? And where have the many details you can no longer recall gone? Are they hidden somewhere in your brain, or are they gone forever?

Such questions have fascinated scientists for hundreds of years, and, as Alison Winter shows in Memory: Fragments of a Modern History, the answers have changed dramatically in just the past century. Tracing the cultural and scientific history of our understanding of memory, Winter explores early metaphors that likened memory to a filing cabinet; later, she shows, that cabinet was replaced by the image of a reel of film, ever available for playback. That model, too, was eventually superseded, replaced by the current understanding of memory as the result of an extremely complicated, brain-wide web of cells and systems that together assemble our pasts. Winter introduces us to innovative scientists and sensationalistic seekers, and, drawing on evidence ranging from scientific papers to diaries to movies, explores the way that new understandings from the laboratory have seeped out into psychiatrists’ offices, courtrooms, and the culture at large. Along the way, she investigates the sensational battles over the validity of repressed memories that raged through the 1980s and shows us how changes in technology—such as the emergence of recording devices and computers—have again and again altered the way we conceptualize, and even try to study, the ways we remember.

Packed with fascinating details and curious episodes from the convoluted history of memory science, Memory is a book you’ll remember long after you close its cover.


336 pages | 32 halftones, 1 table | 6 x 9 | © 2011

History: American History

Reviews

"A deft study of twentieth-century memory controversies."

Jenny Diski | London Review of Books

"Riveting."

Science

"Impressive. . . . Winter has done an admirable job synthesizing many diverse sources into a tidy cultural history. . . . A compelling demonstration that the science of memory—like all science—is both a product of and an influence on the culture from which it springs."

Bookforum

"A brilliantly researched and highly readable account of scientific, quasi-scientific and just plain quack approaches to the way we remember."

Canberra Times

"A brilliant, original history of the intertwined theories of memory and attempts to recall past experience. Winter writes with engaging discernment about the clinic and the courtroom, trauma and therapy, neuroscience and neurospeculation, bringing to revealing life disputes about the reliability of memory that have arisen in the law, the laboratory, and the media."

Daniel Kevles, Yale University

"There is no other book like this--a deeply researched, vividly written, marvelously accessible account of (not quite) a dozen important episodes in what Alison Winter calls the ’sciences of recall’ in the twentieth century. A hugely enjoyable read, full of new information and valuable insights."

Ruth Leys, Johns Hopkins University

"Good books on memory are made of this: sophisticated ideas, subtle observations, and an engaging style. This one by Alison Winter is better than simply good. It’s splendid."

Douwe Draaisma, author of Disturbances of the Mind

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1          Hugo Münsterberg and the Psychology of Witness Memory
2          The Making of Truth Serum
3          Memories of War
4          Wilder Penfield and the Recording of Personal Experience
5          The Three Lives of Bridey Murphy
6          Securing Memory in the Cold War
7          Flashbulb Memories
8          The Law of Memory
9          Frederic Bartlett and the Social Psychology of Remembering
10        Making False Memory
11        Reliving and Revising Memory
Notes
Index

Awards

The University of Chicago Press: Gordon J. Laing Award
Won

History Today/Addison Wesley Longman: Longman/History Today Awards
Shortlist

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