Why We Remember

We usually think of memory as a record of the past, but Charan Ranganath, a neuroscientist and professor at the University of California, Davis, argues that we are not meant to remember everything. We are built to forget. Over twenty-five years, he has studied how flawed, incomplete and deliberately inaccurate memory is. His conclusion is that the brain did not evolve to keep a full account of events. It evolved to pull out the information that helps guide our future. Why We Remember draws on case studies and personal testimonies to lay out the principles behind what we forget and why. It shows how quietly and pervasively memory influences the way we learn, heal and make decisions. The book looks at the part attention, intention, imagination and emotion play in storing memories, and it offers a practical guide to remembering what matters most to us.