Joshua Foer

From the creative minds behind the #1 New York Times bestseller Atlas Obscura comes a road trip into the hidden heart of America--a love letter to the strange, fantastic, and beautiful corners of the United States. America Obscura takes readers on a journey that stretches from shore to shore, in search of the country's folk rituals and roadside museums, its outsider artists and eccentric prophets, its forgotten dreamers and improbable visionaries who helped shape the landscape. Equal parts travel companion and cultural almanac, this is the definitive field guide to America's hidden marvels. Start in Talkeetna, Alaska, where the whimsical 185-foot "Dr. Seuss House" stacks story upon story into the clouds, and watch the moon-driven bore tide of Turnagain Arm roll in like a liquid wall for sub-arctic surfers. Head south to Colorado to visit the International Snow Sculpture Championships, and then drift across the Great Plains to tour the world's largest collection of marbles in Nebraska. In New York, meet a ghostly white deer herd that roams a decommissioned nuclear weapons repository, and in Arizona dine at a pizza shop that also hosts concerts on a 6,000-pipe Wurlitzer organ. With hundreds of breathtaking photographs, maps, and sample road trips, America Obscura is a vividly illustrated cabinet of curiosities from the award-winning chroniclers of the world's hidden wonders that revels in the unexpected, the overlooked, the bizarre, and the mysteriously awe-inspiring. Pack your bags and prepare to be delighted and disoriented, pulled out of the familiar, and dropped into the astonishing as you become re-enchanted with this endlessly curious and surprising country.

From the bestselling authors of Atlas Obscura and Gastro Obscura comes Wild Life, a nature book like no other---a dazzling, over-the-top collection of the world's most extraordinary wild species that takes you to all seven continents and beyond. It's more than a field guide-it's an adventure. From the curious minds of Atlas Obscura, authors of #1 New York Times bestselling Atlas Obscura and Gastro Obscura, comes an unputdownable celebration of the world's living wonders. Learn how dung beetles navigate by the stars, and trees communicate through their roots. Meet one of the strongest animals in the world: the puny peacock mantis shrimp. Pay your respects to a 44,000 year old shrub, float along flying rivers, and explore a garbage dump overseen by endangered storks. There are first person interviews: hear from a honey hunter and his avian partners, a scientist working to find the world's only ocean-dwelling insects, and an offshore radio DJ who is at the heart of the local fishing community. Examine old examples of bird song notation written on sheet music. Featuring over 500 extraordinary plants, animals, and natural phenomena, with illustrations and photos on every page, the book takes readers around the globe-from Antarctic deserts to lush jungles, and into the deepest fathoms of the ocean and the hearts of our densest cities. Teeming with detail and wildly entertaining, Wild Life reinvigorates our sense of wonder, awe and amazement about the incredible creatures we share our planet with.

The Explorer’s Library combines the two New York Times bestselling guides from Atlas Obscura, packaged in a slipcase that evokes the timeless allure of travel. It is the perfect gift for the person who lets curiosity be their compass, who is alive to the world in all its possibilities. Atlas Obscura, is a “wanderlust-whetting cabinet of curiosities on paper” (New York Times) and a runaway New York Times bestseller. Featuring hundreds of unexpected entries that cover all corners of the globe, Atlas Obscura changes the way we think about the world, expanding our sense of how strange and marvelous it really is. A feast of wonder and another New York Times bestseller, Gastro Obscura transforms our sense of what people around the world eat and drink. Ready for a beer made from fog in Chile? Sardinia’s “threads of God” pasta? But far more than a menu of curious delicacies and unexpected dishes, Gastro Obscura focuses on food’s place in our lives, touching on history, culture, travel, festivals, and more.

Discover wonder. "A wanderlust-whetting cabinet of curiosities on paper."- New York Times Inspiring equal parts wonder and wanderlust, Atlas Obscura is a phenomenon of a travel book that shot to the top of bestseller lists when it was first published and changed the way we think about the world, expanding our sense of how strange and marvellous it really is. This second edition takes readers to even more curious and unusual destinations, with more than 100 new places, dozens and dozens of new photographs, and two very special features: twelve city guides, covering Berlin, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Cairo, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Moscow, New York City, Paris, Shanghai, and Tokyo. Plus a foldout map with a dream itinerary for the ultimate around-the-world road trip. More a cabinet of curiosities than traditional guidebook, Atlas Obscura revels in the unexpected, the overlooked, the bizarre, and the mysterious. Here are natural wonders, like the dazzling glow-worm caves in New Zealand, or a baobob tree in South Africa so large it has a pub inside where 15 people can sit and drink comfortably. Architectural marvels, including the M. C. Escher-like stepwells in India. Mind-boggling events, like the Baby-Jumping Festival in Spain-and no, it's not the babies doing the jumping, but masked men dressed as devils who vault over rows of squirming infants. Every page gets to the very core of why humans want to travel in the first place: to be delighted and disoriented, uprooted from the familiar and amazed by the new. With its compelling descriptions, hundreds of photographs, surprising charts, maps for every region of the world, and new city guides, it is a book you can open anywhere and be transported. But proceed with caution: It's almost impossible not to turn to the next entry, and the next, and the next.

”Fremragende bog: Har man helt glemt at huske?” ****** – Politiken Folk bruger i gennemsnit 40 dage om året på at kompensere for ting, de har glemt! Hvorfor lærer vi ikke længere, hvordan vi skal huske alt det, vi skal huske? Hvad sker der med mennesket, når store dele af vores hukommelse gøres ekstern og lægges på computere? Mange af os kan huske de gamle telefonnumre til vores barndomsvenner, men har svært ved at huske vores eget mobilnummer. Hvorfor forholder det sig sådan, og har det nogen betydning? Moonwalk med Einstein giver ikke blot et enestående indblik i et grundlæggende aspekt ved det at være menneske – nemlig vores hukommelse – det er også en underholdende og indtagende beretning om, hvordan Joshua Foer gik fra at være en fyr med en gennemsnitlig hukommelse til at vinde det amerikanske hukommelsesmesterskab. Hvad er hemmeligheden bag vores hukommelse? Hvorfor husker vi overhovedet noget og glemmer noget andet? Hvad ville der ske, hvis vi huskede noget mere? Foer undersøger bl.a. et aspekt ved vores hukommelse, som få af os er villige til at se i øjnene – nemlig at vores hjerne rummer muligheder, som vi ikke engang kan forestille os. I Moonwalk med Einstein udforsker Foer menneskets ældgamle besættelse af vores hjernes evne til at huske, og han gør det så sprudlende og originalt, at det dårligt går op for en, hvor meget man rent faktisk lærer undervejs. ”Fremragende bog: Har man helt glemt at huske? […]er der alligevel gået noget tabt, i takt med at vi kollektivt overlader større og større dele af vores hukommelse til computere? Det er det overordnede spørgsmål, som den unge amerikanske journalist Joshua Foer tager op i sin forrygende interessante, imponerende og underholdende bog med den herlige titel ’Moonwalking with Einstein’.”– Marcus Rubin, Politiken ****** Joshua Foer er født i 1982 i Washington D. C. og er yngste bror af tre – hans ældre brødre er Franklin Foer og Jonathan Safran Foer. Foer er freelance journalist og har skrevet for bl.a. National Geographic, Esquire, New York Times og Washington Post. Han er gift og bor i New Haven, USA.

Atlas Obscura, the 2016 bestseller, offered rabid travellers and dreamers a new travel bucket list of places off the beaten path. This new Atlas Obscura Explorer's Journal will help them keep track of where their wanderlust takes them, and all their adventures along the way. A lay-flat paperback with storage pocket, this journal features blank pages for travellers to write their itineraries and plans, key contacts, and journal entries about their travels near or far. The journal also includes short guides to twelve of the world's most wondrous cities. Each city guide includes a map with 20-30 obscure locations as well as general travel tips ('How to explore the Parisian catacombs the Obscura Way') Cities include: New York, London, Los Angeles, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Budapest, Moscow, Shanghai, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Fes. A perfect gift for travellers of all ages, from students planning a big trek to adults plotting local weekend excursions, or anyone who wants to note their travel dreams and wish-lists.

Can anyone get a perfect memory? The author used to be like most of us, forgetting phone numbers and mislaying keys. Then he learnt art of memory training, discovering mnemonic ancient 'memory palace' technique first practiced by Simonides of Ceos over the years. This title offers a journey through mind, and secrets of how our memory really works.

The blockbuster phenomenon that charts an amazing journey of the mind while revolutionizing our concept of memory "Highly entertaining." --Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker "Funny, curious, erudite, and full of useful details about ancient techniques of training memory." --The Boston GlobeAn instant bestseller that has now become a classic, Moonwalking with Einstein recounts Joshua Foer's yearlong quest to improve his memory under the tutelage of top "mental athletes." He draws on cutting-edge research, a surprising cultural history of remembering, and venerable tricks of the mentalist's trade to transform our understanding of human memory. From the United States Memory Championship to deep within the author's own mind, this is an electrifying work of journalism that reminds us that, in every way that matters, we are the sum of our memories.

Why is it that career waiters don't have to write down their orders? How are the best violinists able to memorize a new score after playing it only once? Is good memory a personality trait some people are born with - or is there an art to remembering we can all learn and ultimately master? After one year of talking to memory experts and neuroscientists, savants and amnesiacs, chess masters and historians of memory, and undertaking intense memory training under a Memory Grand Master, Joshua Foer achieves the seemingly unachievable: becoming a U. S. Memory Champion. He finds himself among the extraordinary ranks of people who can recite pi to ten-thousand decimal places, memorize shuffled decks of cards in under an hour and commit to memory what happened on ninety-six different historical dates in five minutes. With the right training, dogged determination and the competitive drive of physical athletes, Moonwalking with Einstein shows us, we can all achieve mastery of our memory.