Among the human cognitive functions, memory is probably one of the first to be cherished by human beings, attract interest by laymen and philosophers, and scientifically studied. The long-lasting human interest in this function is evidenced by the existence of a goddess of memory in Greek mythology, Mnemosyne (see her fabulous representation in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painting). In Hesiod's poem Theogony (8th century b.c.e.), Mnemosyne is the daughter of Uranus (sky) and Gaia (earth). Such a legendary parenthood clearly highlights the importance given to memory. Mnemosyne is the mother of the nine Muses, fathered by Zeus, goddesses and inspirations of the arts (e.g., music, poetry, literature, theater, song, dance). Memory can thus be seen as the origin of human artistic creativity. The cult of Mnemosyne was said to be widespread in the region of Olympia and consisted of a kind of cure with different waters, waters for memory and waters for oblivion and forgetfulness. Memory and forgetting are still considered two indissociable aspects of the human cognitive system. Mnemosyne is also thought of as having created all the words and language, the tools to share knowledge. This mythology tells us that for the ancient Greeks (and up until the Renaissance), memory is not considered a mere store for traces of past events but is often synonymous with knowledge and meaning. All the words related to memory we use nowadays, such as mnemonic and amnesia, are derived from the same Greek word Mnemosyne. With such mythological roots, it does not come as a surprise that inquiries about human memory can be traced back to antiquity, with philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. Plato emphasized the power of memory to preserve knowledge, using a metaphor to a wax tablet. As said by Socrates in Plato's Theaetetus, “This is the gift of Memory, the mother of the Muses, and that whenever we wish to remember anything we see or hear or think of in our own minds, we hold this wax under the perceptions and thoughts and imprint them upon it, just as we make impressions from seal rings; and whatever is imprinted we remember and know as long as its image lasts, but whatever is rubbed out or cannot be imprinted we forget and do not know.” Aristotle stressed the difference between memory and recollection as two kinds of memory. This distinction arose from his idea that only humans can recollect, whereas several animals are able to remember (in the sense of storing past events). The interest of philosophers in memory is still vivid, and recent years have seen the birth of the philosophy of memory as a distinct field (see Michaelian, Debus, & Perrin, 2020). The study of memory in psychological science is as old as this science itself. Wilhelm Wundt and William James were pioneers in this field, and Herman Ebbinghaus developed the first scientific approach to studying memory with his experiments using lists of nonsense syllables and then associating them with meaningful words (Ebbinghaus, 1885). Some of his findings, such as the concepts of the learning and forgetting curves or the distinction between sensory, short-term, and long-term memory, remain relevant today. This history shows that memory has aroused interest for a very long time, and interest is still keen, as shown by the publication of this new book on the topic.Current Issues in Memory: Memory Research in the Public Interest, edited by Jan Rummel, celebrates the tenth anniversary of a very successful series on Current Issues on Memory published by Routledge, for which Robert Logie serves as series editor. This book marks also the passing of the baton to Jan Rummel, who is becoming the new editor of this series. Formally, the book is a collection of 16 chapters, a compilation of chapters issued from the seven previously published books in the series. To direct the editorial choice of the chapters, the editor proposed bringing together chapters showing the interest of memory research for the general public. For a few years there has been increasing concern about whether psychological science can provide applications that will be practical and meaningful to the general public. This has occurred at a time when part of the general public is expressing more and more overtly its suspicions about the ability of scientific research to provide helpful and trustworthy advice. As illustrated by the COVID crisis, such people entertain negative opinions about scientific results, practice, and recommendations. In psychological science, it is probably more difficult for those of us who work in experimental cognitive psychology to gain the trust of the general public. Questions about clinical populations or the impact of aging on well-being are often better understood because their direct impact on people's lives is more obvious. This is why several initiatives have been taken to more efficiently communicate to the public the results of scientific work. In the field of memory research, the creation in 2012 by the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition of a journal dedicated to the applied memory research, the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, is one example of the efforts made by the scientific community. The inclusion in each article of a summary for the general audience should facilitate the contact with the general public. In such a context, the present book makes a further step in the direction of explaining how research can have concrete impact on society and people's lives. Showing the concrete impact of research also provides a way to increase the external validity of memory research. However, Rummel explains that the aim of the book is not to address applied aspects of research on memory but to exemplify how it can speak and be informative to the general public.The book is organized around four sections of balanced size, four or five chapters each, and contains a well-rounded collection of chapters covering a large range of topics in memory research. The framing of these chapters is unusual but clever, as it is a very nice way to organize the field of memory research, the successive sections being dedicated to memory representations, memory adaptations, memory limitations, and memory augmentations.The first part of the volume is titled “Memory Representation: From (Visual) Perception to Stored Information.” This part focuses on how visual inputs from the environment become mental representations and how the ability to store visual representations in working memory is crucial for everyday functioning. The first chapter, by Cesare Cornoldi and Irene Mammarella, focuses on visuospatial working memory. In this domain, the dominant model is the one proposed by Baddeley (1986; see Baddeley, Hitch, & Allen, 2021, for a review of the different versions of this model). Contrary to the segregation of verbal and visuospatial domains introduced by Baddeley, the original contribution of Vecchi and Cornoldi's model, named the continuity model, is to suggest a continuity along two dimensions: the type of material and the type of processes. For the visuospatial domain, this approach leads to a continuity across the different visuospatial abilities often depicted in the literature. This framework predicts memory weaknesses and strengths of specific atypically developing populations (e.g., learning disabled children and people with genetic syndromes such as Down syndrome, spina bifida, and fragile X syndrome). Regarding how this chapter can speak to the general audience, the report of studies on genetic syndromes or learning difficulties may easily resonate with the general public, often interested in knowing more about pathologies or difficulties.The second chapter, by Amy Shelton and Naohide Yamamoto, presents the relationships between visual and spatial memory by examining the roles of visual information, visual coding, and visual memory in various aspects of spatial cognition. After a first part, more theoretically driven, this chapter develops a second part on the role of spatial memory in navigation (e.g., across the kitchen or to go our favorite bookshop), which can speak to audiences outside the memory community.The two last chapters of this section clearly target topics that would speak to the general audience. The third chapter, authored by Vicky Bruce, focuses on remembering faces. The title itself brings to mind memories of some misrecognition of friends or colleagues in a conference. Our modern social life leads us to be daily bombarded with faces, old and new, and some misrecognitions can have dramatic consequences in the legal context (flaws in memory are also discussed in the third section of the book, dedicated to false memories). Vicky Bruce gives a clear summary of the factors affecting face memory based on experimental, neuropsychological, and neuroscientific evidence. The chapter ends with some considerations about eyewitnesses.The final chapter, by Andrew Hollingworth, summarizes in a very didactical way what is known about the complex interactions between perception, attention, and memory in the processing of real-world scenes. Overall, the first section of this book browses the cognitive system from perception to working and long-term memory. It is a bit unfortunate that this section is restricted to visuospatial information, drastically narrowing the type of memory representations considered. On one hand, this reflects a general tendency toward more memory research on the visual and spatial information than on verbal and auditory, for example. A search of the Web of Science on July 26, 2021, showed that the former represents more than two thirds of the published papers in 2020–2021, which was already the case in 1990–1991. This tendency can be traced back to 1960–61, despite the fact that the number of papers published on this topic has increased from 8 to over 1,110 On the other hand, one might be surprised by the lack of a chapter on other aspects of human memory. Although the role of visuospatial information is important, human beings manipulate and store other types of information, some of which we are probably the only ones to process, such as verbal-linguistic or symbolic representations.The second section of the book is titled “Memory Adaptations: Forgetting the Past, Remembering the Future.” The section wittily combines two areas that are considered here as the two sides of the same coin: the forgetting of previously stored information and the remembering of intentions for the future. It frames research around two time periods: the past that we tend to forget and the future that we try to envision. Chapter 5, by John Wixted, and Chapter 6, by Celia Harris, John Sutton, and Amanda Barnie, are focused on forgetting. After tracing back forgetting from its original study by Ebbinghaus, Wixted presents the different theories of interference that account for forgetting in long-term memory and the role of consolidation to counteract it. This is achieved with concern for returning to the origins of this field of research, which is sufficiently rare to be praised. The historical perspective is also well integrated with the current literature. In a second part of the chapter, cellular and molecular evidence is presented to elucidate the biological mechanisms of the forgetting and consolidation processes, with particular emphasis being placed on the effects of sleep and some drugs on these processes. Although this chapter provides a wide panorama, readers from the general public may experience difficulties in seeing the direct impact on everyday life, except for the effects of sleep.The next chapter, by Harris et al., presents research on forgetting, from the individual (autobiographic forgetting) to individuals in groups (social forgetting) and finally to groups themselves (situated forgetting). Autobiographic memory can be studied through laboratory analog (i.e., retrieval-induced forgetting, direct forgetting, and think/no-think paradigms) to the everyday forgetting on personal events. The social influence that may cause forgetting or conversely can provide support for memory (what is called social forgetting) is detailed, and it leads to the integration in a situated-cognition approach. The chapter clearly shows the challenge of finding adequate paradigms to study forgetting on the scale of a community or a nation. Although understanding the paradigms may require some knowledge of experimental psychology, the introductory example on war veterans anchors efficiently the scientific studies on societal questions to rouse the interest of a general audience.The focus of Chapters 7 and 8 is prospective memory, that is, memory for future plans. Jan Rummel and Lia Kvavilashvili's chapter urges the study of prospective memory to go back to naturalistic and real-life settings. The well-established laboratory paradigms by Einstein and McDaniel have boosted the exploration of the prospective memory by establishing controlled conditions. However, the authors plead for a reconnection to real life to generalize laboratory findings. The final chapter of this section, by Shayne Loft, Key Dismukes, and Tobias Grundgeiger, responds to this wish by showing how research on prospective memory is particularly important in risky contexts with exceptionally high safety concerns (e.g., air traffic or submarine control, emergency or intensive health care). Akin to the examples used in Chapter 6 to explain forgetting, the examples and the different situations described would speak to anyone, and it is easy to understand from them why lapses in prospective memory can lead to dramatic accidents or, conversely, why experts (pilots or surgeons) benefit from the automaticity of procedures and from the prioritization they are able to implement among the various tasks at hand.As clearly shown in the second section, dedicated to prospective memory, our memory suffers from limitations and flaws. The third section of the book focuses exclusively on a particular limitation, the generation of false memories, probably because it is among the most frequently investigated issues. It is also the most intriguing phenomenon for the general audience. How can our precious memories be so unfaithful to us? How can they betray us and disguise themselves with all the appearance of truth and truthful events? This phenomenon has tremendous and sometimes dramatic consequences. But it can also lead human beings to relativize their intellectual supremacy. The introductory chapter of this section, by Cara Laney and Elizabeth Loftus, shows through astonishing examples how false memories, like any memories, have real consequences for behavior. Kimberley Wade, Sophie Nightingale, and Melissa Colloff's chapter discusses how photos affect our memories, both our childhood memories and those of less personal events (such as Hurricane Sandy in 2012). In modern societies, where most people have a mobile phone that is also a camera, photos are a major tool of communications. Based on Beth Loftus's work, Maria Zaragoza, Patrick Rich, Eric Rindal, and Rachel DeFranco's chapter reports the work on forced fabrication, that is, the fabrication of false memories in real-world forensic investigations through suggestive interviews. The case of children as eyewitness in legal proceedings is evoked in the next chapter, by Henry Otgaar, Mark Howe, Nathalie Brackmann, and Jianqin Wang, and Kamala London, Sarah Kulkofsky, and Christina Perez review the factors that affect the reliability of children's reports.The last section questions how can memory be improved or augmented, especially in the aging population and in educational settings. The current topic is certainly of public interest, as illustrated by the numerous products advertised for improving memory performance. The recent lengthening of our life span has prompted concerns about how we can maintain cognitive performance. Tim Salthouse's chapter summarizes his research on cognitive aging, especially on individual differences in working memory capacity. Although the effect of aging on memory is popular, the reading of this chapter requires in-depth knowledge in psychology, particularly psychometry, which limits its readership.The next chapter, by Anna Stigsdotter Neely and Lars Nyberg, directly targets a very popular topic, the training of memory to preserve declining cognitive abilities. Taking both a behavioral and brain perspective, the authors expose studies on working memory training and its potential transfer effects. This chapter was originally published in 2014, and since then the field of working memory training has faced hot debates, and today the general view tends to be less optimistic than at the time of writing of this chapter (see Novick, Bunting, Dougherty, & Engle, 2020, for the latest review of this field). The two last chapters discuss educational settings. Darren Levin, Kenneth Thurman, and Marissa Kiepert, review the various tools used to assess working memory after having briefly summarized three working memory models (Baddeley, Cowan, and Ericsson & Kintsch). They also provide some discussion of the ecological validity of these tools. Finally, Henry Roediger, Pooja Agarwal, Sean Kang, and Elizabeth Marsh make the inflammatory claim (as they said) that education in schools would benefit from more testing. Their claim is a direct consequence of the famous testing effect described by Roediger and Karpicke (2006), and this chapter reviews findings from their lab on the critical importance of testing (or retrieval) for future remembering.To conclude, it is probably not fully fair for me, a memory researcher, to say memory is actually a fascinating topic of research, but information about this function of our cognitive system is also highly appreciated by the general public. Listen to the concerns most people express about their fear of losing their memory, which can affect their most beloved memories as much as the retrieval of first names. The choice to collect previously published chapters may disappoint memory researchers, who may expect to find original and new contributions in a new book. However, this book provides an overview of the field of memory research, which could be useful for newcomers such as students. It will be useful for professionals who want to find some specific information without reading the entire series of books.As the editor himself notes, although some of the chapters have been updated, “no major changes were made regarding the chapter contents.” This is the pitfall of books based on previously published material. It is questionable to present them as targeting current issues, because they were first published between 2009 and 2019. In addition, some chapters include cross-references to the books from which they were taken, which can be confusing. More importantly, none of the authors wrote their chapters from the perspective of reaching a general audience.Finally, as the editor says, the field of memory research can be envisioned as a monster because of the variety of distinct memory systems (e.g., sensory, short-term, working, long-term, episodic, prospective, declarative, procedural, autobiographical). Across the different chapters, different memory systems are described (e.g., working memory in Chapters 1, 14, and 15; prospective memory in Chapters 7 and 8; long-term memory in Chapters 12, 13, and 17). On one hand, finding contributions targeting the various memory systems in a single book is extremely rare and can be applauded. On the other hand, reading this book can be a challenge for students or newcomers to the field. How can they understand the differences and the relationships between these distinct memory systems? Some preliminary knowledge or the reading of a textbook (e.g., Baddeley, Eysenck, & Anderson, 2020) is essential. Alternatively, an introductory chapter could have provided a map to navigate through the various contributions.This book might be more useful if the reader approaches it as a wine tasting experience or, I should better say, a whisky tasting experience, to pay tribute to Robert Logie. The reader will get samples of memory research and of the book series, but the book won't make the reader's head spin. For this, they should join the large community of memory researchers who are continuing to explore one of the most fascinating topics in human cognition since antiquity. Let's hope that this book will attract the next generation of researchers.