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Before We Forget

How Remembering Will Get Us Through the Next 75 Years

Mary Soderstrom

$39.99

Paperback

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English
Dundurn Press
14 May 2026
Safeguarding collective wisdom is a powerful tool for civilization to overcome the major upheavals ahead.

Climate change, civil unrest, wars: How will we make it through the tough times looming before us? By remembering, Mary Soderstrom argues. Ours is not the first time in history when catastrophe has threatened societies, and using examples from China, the Roman Empire, and North American Indigenous cultures, Soderstrom shows how memory can lead the way toward the future. She begins by examining how memory works and then details how we store our collective memories in libraries and archives, as well as in the vastness of the digital universe.

In part an entertaining history of knowledge and where we keep it, Before We Forget allays fears and encourages people to develop strategiesfor safeguarding collective and individual wisdom, which we will need to meet the challenges ahead.
By:  
Imprint:   Dundurn Press
Country of Publication:   Canada
Dimensions:   Height: 228mm,  Width: 152mm,  Spine: 25mm
Weight:   297g
ISBN:   9781459755857
ISBN 10:   1459755855
Pages:   264
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Mary Soderstrom is a writer with eight works of non-fiction, three short story collections, six novels, and one children's book to her credit. Before We Forget is her nineteenth book. She lives in Montreal.

Reviews for Before We Forget: How Remembering Will Get Us Through the Next 75 Years

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 *


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