Memory

" ... Memories have been declared as reliable as sounds caught on tape, and they have been dismissed as inherently evanescent. Researchers have tried to understand what we do when we remember by appealing to motion pictures, filing cabinets, and flashbulbs. Tracing the cultural and scientific history of such drastically opposed convictions, Winter introduces us to the ... scientists ... medical practitioners ... police interrogators, and, in some cases ... sensation-seekers who sought to master this mysterious power. ... Along the way, Wintershows us how changes in technology - the advent of cinema, the development of popular recording, the coming of digital media - reshaped how we could think about remembering, and how we might investigate it. Culminating in the climactic "memory wars" of the 1980s and '90s, the story [Winter] tells not only illuminates the practices of science and medicine, but does so for a subject that is absolutely essential to how we all live our daily lives. ..."--Jacket.