It’s so much easier to see and process the world if we divide it into discrete bits. This is non-fiction, that’s fiction. This is a good restaurant, that’s a bad one. This person is successful, that one isn’t.

Editor’s note:  It’s funny that I was told this book is “easy to read” because for me, it was not.  Small is a scientist and therefore while more reachable than most, it was still a slog for me, albeit a worthwhile slog.  Perhaps you, like me, worry on both sides of the memory equation; forgetting and/or remembering too much.  Dr. Small made me understand a bit of brain science and that the absence of balance are the extreme mental diseases dementia and autism.   The kind of stuff most of us deal with is just the regular functioning brain, remembering and forgetting as needed for a healthy life.

Editor’s comment:  Isaacson rides again, making a well-chronicled figure interesting in a different way, as he did with Einstein and Jobs.  His research is outstanding and it helps a non-artist like me that he accompanies most references with pencils, diagrams, notes, paintings and sculptures of the great master.