My first memory is of sitting on a porch as a three-year-old and getting leapt upon by a hissing, snarling cat. I have a picture of myself, taken moments before the feline assault. The story is well-preserved in my family. But is this my legitimate first memory or was it planted? If the memory is accurate, does the distinction matter? Can a memory be accurate? Alison Winter's research into historical and modern ideas of what constitutes memory, and the science of understanding how it works, have resulted in this fascinating account of the history of a shifting concept. Winter--associate professor of history at the University of Chicago and the author of Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain--has plenty of grist for the mill, given that reliance on accounts from times past essentially means crafting an account of memory based on memory.
She makes smart use of this meta-nonfictional opportunity in Memory, never falling too deeply into the rabbit hole but also acutely aware of her shaping by present-day cultural norms and "truths" about memory. Of particular interest is the rise of "truth serum" as a supposedly guaranteed path to retrieving 100% accurate memories and its fall from grace--followed by another rise, an ongoing cycle of acceptance and rejection by the medical community determined largely by societal circumstances at the time. Upon reaching the chapter on the False Memory Syndrome Foundation--a group dedicated to ferreting out a tendency by the medical support community to draw out "repressed memories" of trauma that are, in fact, "untrue"--readers may find their copies have more passages underlined than not. --Matthew Tiffany, counselor, writer for Condalmo