Original, wide-ranging, and insightful, this remarkable interweaving of science, history, and personal anecdote finds a writer-magician doing the near-impossible. While exploring both individual and collective memory, and incorporating the lessons of contemporary science, as well as those of China, Rome, and Indigenous North America, Mary Soderstrom reaches into a hat and pulls out a coherent, readable work of art. Bravo!
Ken McGoogan, author of Shadows of Tyranny: Defending Democracy in an Age of Dictatorship
Original, wide-ranging, and insightful, this remarkable interweaving of science, history, and personal anecdote finds a writer-magician doing the near-impossible. While exploring both individual and collective memory, and incorporating the lessons of contemporary science, as well as those of China, Rome, and Indigenous North America, Mary Soderstrom reaches into a hat and pulls out a coherent, readable work of art.
Ken McGoogan, author of Shadows of Tyranny
Since classical times at least, people have built Memory Palaces – imaginary mansions with infinite rooms where they learn to store and retrieve vast treasures of memory. In Before We Forget, Mary Soderstrom becomes a memory palace herself. Sensing the societal collapse that looms, she explores scores of ways to explore what memory is, how civilizational knowledge has been lost and retrieved through the centuries, and what things small and large we each can do to strengthen and preserve memory against tides of forgetting. Supporting your local library is one place to start.
Christopher Moore, writer and historian
Before We Forget is a layered exploration of how individual and collective memories can help us understand and leverage the past to confront current and future challenges. By weaving personal narratives with science and history, Mary Soderstrom outlines the myriad ways that memory and perception impact how we understand ourselves and the wider world. The author's exploration of how individuals and memory institutions are vital in the transmission and preservation of community stories is timely and provides important insight into how memories can be safeguarded and shared into the future.
Alexandra Mills, Head of Special Collections and Archive, Concordia University
Throughout, Soderstrom interweaves fascinating tidbits from science and history, as well as reflections on her own life, which offer a thematic throughline and a welcome emotional depth.
J.T. Wickham, Montreal Review of Books