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Remembering and Forgetting: A

Comparison of Two New Books

By Barbara Perry-Sheldon

As many people age, they begin to question why they seem to forget things more
often. Archbald-Pannone (2020) noted they worry about “senior moments” they
see in themselves and others when they can’t recall a name or lose their keys.

A national poll of people between the ages of 50 and 64 noted that half were
concerned about developing memory loss or dementia (Ianzito, 2019). This fear,
called athazagoraphobia, may be extreme and debilitating. This article reviews
and contrasts two books published in 2021 that offer much reassurance and
provide insights into memory and forgetting. Both note that “senior moments” are

not the same as dementia and that there are benefits of not remembering. Both
books share information relative to our personal lives as well as to education.

Genova, L. (2021). Remember: The science of memory and the art of forgetting. Harmony. 272 pages. ISBN: 978-
0593137956
Small, S. A. (2021). Forgetting: The benefits of not remembering. Crown. 245 pages. ISBN: 978-0593136195
Forgetting: The Benefits of Not Remembering by Scott Small
The title of Small’s book gives the premise or focus of the book: why
forgetting is important. The author, a physician, professor, and Director of the
Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Columbia University, has more than 35
years of research and 140 publications related to memory (Halpern, 2021). Small
states that he wrote the book “to share emerging ideas from within the sometimes
cloistered halls of academia about the benefits of normal forgetting versus its
pathological form, the type that accelerates our forgetting from its baseline state
and about which fears are entirely justified” (p. 188). A pathological form of
forgetting, such as that of Alzheimer’s disease, stands in sharp contrast to normal
forgetting, and the epilogue of the book describes the disease and shares the
encouraging news that research labs and pharmaceutical companies are searching
for causes and interventions. In the rest of the book, Small cites new research,
noting that “forgetting is not just normal but beneficial to our cognitive and
creative abilities, to our emotional well-being, and even to societal health” (p. 5).
Based on research with extensive references, the book’s concrete examples and
metaphors, many from education, clearly explain how the parts of the brain work
to create a memory. One example is the analogy of the computer for the way “our
brains store, save, and retrieve memories” (p. 12). Small compares the binding of
neurons to inattentive first graders and the hippocampus to a strict teacher (p. 23).
He labels the hippocampus as the memory teacher and the prefrontal cortex as the

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