Memory. There may be nothing more important to human beings than our ability to enshrine experience and recall it. While philosophers and poets have elevated memory to an almost mystical level, psychologists have struggled to demystify it. Now, according to Daniel Schacter, one of the most distinguished memory researchers, the mysteries of memory are finally yielding to dramatic, even revolutionary, scientific breakthroughs. Schacter explains how and why it may change our understanding of everything from false memory to Alzheimer's disease, from recovered memory to amnesia with fascinating firsthand accounts of patients with striking-and sometimes bizarre-amnesias resulting from brain injury or psychological trauma.

Daniel L. Schacter is professor and chair of psychology at Harvard University. He is the author of Stranger Behind the Engram: Theories of Memory and The Psychology of Science and has received the Troland Research Award from the National academy of Sciences. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts with his wife and two daughters.