The Memory Advantage: Improve Your Memory, Mood, and Confidence Throughout Life [Hardcover]

Thomas H. Crook PhD. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2007

Dr. Thomas Crook is a major contributor in the field of memory research and The Memory Advantage shares his wealth of knowledge in a handy, easy to read guide that provides you with everything you need to know, to repair, and maintain the mechanisms in your brain which help you stay sharp and focused.The research shows, that once you are past 25 your mental capacity has begun to wane, so it's not simply the older generation that can benefit from this knowledge. The Memory Advantage is for every adult who wishes to take an active role in improving his or her mental fitness and keeping it that way for life! This is the first publication to incorporate the facts and findings with simple exercises and lifestyle recommendations that will get you back on track!The Memory Advantage delivers it all, in a single volume, everything you need to know to care for our most powerful and important tool and get the most out of life!

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dr. Crook is a clinical psychologist with 30+ years experience with adult-onset cognitive disorders. Dr. Crook is author over 200 scientific papers and eight books and has delivered hundreds of lectures. Dr. Crook has done hundreds of media interviews on television shows such as Good Morning America, The Today Show and 20/20 and in such publications as Time and Newsweek.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 182 pages
• Publisher: Select Books (March 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590791185
• ISBN-13: 978-1590791189
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,300,262 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Not Advantageous, July 21, 2011

By 

Judah (Terre Haute In USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Memory Advantage: Improve Your Memory, Mood, and Confidence Throughout Life (Paperback)

Read the book cover to cover, and what advice is good to help my memory? I don't remember!

What I do remember is Crook loves his abbreviations. For example on page 32, he defines MCI as 'Mild Cognitive Impairment', a condition of significant adult memory loss but not dementia. Page 32 is where MCI is defined, and it is used extensively. Twenty pages later, I was wondering why the phone company was in my memory book. If your target audience is not remembering short term things like abbreviations well, why use so many? AAMI, CBT, CL, MCI, MCVI, MTBI, PS, and others decorate the pages -- reading the memory book is itself an exercise in memory.

Early book talks techniques, and I was hoping for a detailed step-by-step on how to build a 'memory palace'. Crook mentions the history of the technique, that it does work, and tells an anecdote of a speaker who pictured place settings at a feast as representing unique topics and good lines in a long speech... but nothing on how to create your own memory palace. Much of the book is like that, mentioning good techniques without explanation of how to use them. Best technique was 'selective forgetting' the art of taking a bad memory you are dwelling on unhealthily and replacing it with a good memory. I tried it and couldn't get it working.

Late book talks about science and studies, including Alzheimer's Research. Certain memory drugs are touted as useful, but they are expensive and the 'normal' supplements on the market do not contain enough of the useful substance(s) to work. Interesting, but not helpful.

My edition of this book is the one with the blue cover from 2006; it is conceivable an editor was found for later editions, in which case maybe it is less impenetrable. It does mention the class of drugs that treat AD (Alzheimer's Disease) with detail. It also contains a selective glossary, an index, graphs, and memory exercises (not for improvement, for judging how bad your memory is).

I had hoped this book would improve my memory, but instead it wasted my time. Tantalizing glimpses of what exists without how to apply them disappointed me, and the overuse of abbreviation was extremely annoying.