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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 strategies for safeguarding collective and individual wisdom, which we will need to meet the challenges 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 strategies for safeguarding collective and individual wisdom, which we will need to meet the challenges ahead.
Price: $21.99
Pages: 248
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Imprint: Dundurn Press
Publication Date:
31 March 2026
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9781459755857
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, Social and cultural anthropology, HISTORY / Historiography, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Customs & Traditions, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Globalization, SCIENCE / Global Warming & Climate Change, Oral history, Climate change
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.
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.
- Preface: Why Memory Is Important
- Part 1: Memories Are Made of This
- 1 What Is Memory And How Did George Do It?
- 2 Memory Is the Highway of Life
- 3 Where We Keep Our Memories: Libraries and Other Places
- 4 Cyber Memories
- 5 When Memory Departs: Dementia, Gaslighting, and Cultural Extinction
- Part 2: Three Cases of Forgetting ... and Recovery
- 6 China: A History of Forgetting and Remembering
- 7 Rome: Memory Lost but the Heritage Lasts
- 8 The Indigenous Peoples of North America: A Tale of Loss and Recovery
- Part 3: The Future of Remembering
- 9 The Gathering Darkness and What to Do About It
- 10 The Things to Carry
- Afterword: Of Time and the River Flowing