Customer Reviews

White Gloves

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As the discipline of psychology struggles to emerge from its artifice-inducingdecades of behaviorism, memory research does much of the heavy lifting-- uniting laboratory rigor, theoretical sophistication, and humane concerns with "qualitative" field work (that is, talking to real people in ordinary ways). "White Gloves" presents the state of the art quite well, in a literate, well-crafted style that sounds like one very smart and wise person talking to others. The book sets current work on memory in the context of the author's life, and the lives of many famous (and less famous) characters from the professional literature.
For those who want an academic tone to their books on current science, this is the wrong book--try Daniel Schacter's "Searching for Memory." For those who find the close logic of (even the best) academic writing trying, but who would like to know the state of the art, "White Gloves" is a fine, moving choice

The person who chose the title cost the author thousand of book sales. I can't remember why I picked it up (it wasn't because of the interesting title or cover page layout), but it was one of those books you sometime find that change the way you see the world. You'll never think of your own memories or the testimony of eyewitnesses in the same way ever again. Share it with someone and you'll have conversation starters for weeks.