Books like The Seven Sins of Memory by Daniel L. Schacter

Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" explains how two distinct mental systems shape our judgments and decisions, offering insights into the biases that influence everyday choices.

A research‑based guide that explains how memory functions and offers practical techniques for improving verbal, numerical, visual, and spatial recall.

Drawing on his own work and that of other cognitive, clinical, and neuroscientists, Schacter gives us overwhelming evidence for the thesis that we possess more than one memory system, which explains why some brain-damaged people cannot remember past events, and others cannot acquire new knowledge or call up old. He also shows us how new breakthroughs in brain imaging are allowing us to see, for the first time, the many parts of the brain that must interact to enable us to encode or retrieve a memory. Searching for Memory contains fascinating firsthand accounts of patients with striking - and sometimes bizarre - amnesias resulting from brain injury or psychological trauma. Schacter also takes us into the hidden world of implicit memories - unconscious influences of the past that, outside our awareness, affect our judgments, preferences, and actions. And he examines the nature and accuracy of emotionally traumatic memories, using the latest advances in cognitive neuroscience to clarify vexing issues in the heated controversy over repressed memories of childhood trauma.

In 1932 Cambridge University Press published Remembering by psychologist Frederic Bartlett. The landmark book described fascinating studies of memory and presented the theory of schema that informs much of cognitive science and psychology today. In Bartlett's most famous experiment, subjects read a Native American story about ghosts and then retold the tale. Because their backgrounds were so different from the cultural context of the story, the subjects changed details that they could not understand. On the basis of observations like these, Bartlett developed his claim that memory is a process of reconstruction, and that this reconstruction is in important ways a social act. His ideas about the social psychology of memory and the cultural context of remembering were long neglected but are finding an interested and responsive audience today.

Think you have a good memory? Think again. Memories are our most cherished possessions. We rely on them every day of our lives. They make us who we are. And yet the truth is they are far from being the accurate record of the past we like to think they are. True, we can all admit to having suffered occasional memory lapses, such as entering a room and immediately forgetting why, or suddenly being unable to recall the name of someone we've met dozens of times. But what if we have the potential for more profound errors of memory, even verging on outright fabrication and self-deception? Dr Julia Shaw uses the latest research to show the astonishing variety of ways in which our brains can indeed be led astray.