The Book of Memory: How We Become Who We Are

Philosopher Rowlands (The Philosopher and the Wolf) weaves together philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and personal anecdote for an expansive look at how memory shapes identity. Memories are made, preserved, and recalled in ways that imbue them with inaccuracies, Rowland notes, explaining that each time a memory’s called up, it must be repackaged for long-term storage, a process wherein links are drawn between previously unconnected neurons; over time, repeated reconsolidations can warp the memory. Such edits may be a flaw of the human brain—or, as Rowlands suggests, an intentional means of ensuring memories are retained by tailoring them to better fit one’s current context. (The author describes a childhood memory in which his father now looks like an “old man”—a way of retaining the memory in the absence of a ready image of his father’s younger face.) He also explores how memories can be passed from one person to another, with children, for example, sometimes absorbing their parents’ memories. Throughout, Rowlands provides perceptive insights into how the brain negotiates the past, how memory shapes the self, and how identity is therefore best understood as a complex, shifting entity that exists beyond “the spatial boundaries of your body” and experience. (“The question of when and where you begin and when and where you end has no straightforward answer,” he observes.) The result is a mind-expanding meditation on what humans recall and why. (Oct.)