Why Life Speeds Up As You Get Older - How Memory Shapes our Past

Is it true, as the novelist Cees Nooteboom once wrote, that Memory is like a dog that lies down where it pleases? Where do the long, lazy summers of our childhood go? Why is it that as we grow older time seems to condense, speed up, elude us, while in old age significant events from our distant past can seem as vivid and real as what happened yesterday? In this enchanting and thoughtful book, Douwe Draaisma, author of the internationally acclaimed Metaphors of Memory, explores the nature of autobiographical memory. Applying a unique blend of scholarship, poetic sensibility and keen observation he tackles such extraordinary phenomena as dj-vu, near-death experiences, the memory feats of idiot-savants and the effects of extreme trauma on memory recall. Raising almost as many questions as it answers, this fascinating book will not fail to touch you at the same time as it educates and entertains. Contents
1. Memory is like a dog that lies down where it pleases
2. Flashes in the dark: first memories
3. Smell and memory
4. Yesterdays record
5. The inner flashbulb
6. Why do we remember forwards and not backwards? 7. The absolute memories of Funes and Sherashevsky
8. The advantages of a defect: the savant syndrome
9. The memory of a grandmaster: a conversation with Ton Sijbrands
10. Trauma and memory: the Demjanjuk case
11. Richard and Anna Wagner: forty-five years of married life
12. In oval mirrors we drive around: on experiencing a sense of dj vu
13. Reminiscences
14. Why life speeds up as you get older
15. Forgetting
16. I saw my life flash before me
17. From memory - Portrait with Still Life.

Author/Editor Details
Douwe Draaisma, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, The Netherlands