Why life speeds up as you get older : how memory shapes our past

Author(s)

• Draaisma, D.

Bibliographic Information

Why life speeds up as you get older : how memory shapes our past

Douwe Draaisma ; translated by Arnold and Erica Pomerans

Cambridge University Press, 2004

• : hbk
• : pbk

Other Title

Waarom het leven sneller gaat als je ouder wordt : over het autobiografische geheugen

Uniform Title

Waarom het leven sneller gaat als je ouder wordt

Note

Includes bibliographical references and index

HTTP:URL=http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/cam041/2004049441.html Information=Table of contents

HTTP:URL=http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/cam041/2004049441.html Information=Publisher description

Description and Table of Contents

Description

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 deja-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.

Table of 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. Yesterday's 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 deja 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.

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

• NCID: BA70026931
• ISBN:
  • 0521834244
  • 9780521691994
• LCCN: 2004049441
• Country Code: uk
• Title Language Code: eng
• Text Language Code: eng
• Original Language Code: dut
• Place of Publication: Cambridge
• Pages/Volumes: ix, 277 p.
• Size: 24 cm
• Classification:
  • LCC : BF378.A87
  • DC22 : 153.1/3
• Subject Headings:
  • LCSH : Autobiographical memory