Palaces Of Memory

The Memory Palace

A brilliant, ambitious follow–up to The Secret Lives of Buildings, in which Hollis turns his focus from the great architectural constructions of the past to the now–vanished chambers they once contained. The rooms we live in are always more than just four walls. As we decorate these spaces and fill them with objects and friends, they shape our lives and become the backdrop to our sense of self. one day, the structures will be gone, but even then, traces of the stories and the memories they contained will persist. In this dazzling work of imaginative reconstruction, edward Hollis takes us to the sites of great abodes now lost to history and piecing together the fragments that remain, re–creates their vanished chambers. From Rome's palatine to the old palace of Westminster and the petit Trianon at Versailles, from the sets of MGM studios in Hollywood to the pavilions of the Crystal palace and the author's own grandmother's sitting room, The Memory Palace is a glittering treasure trove of luminous forgotten places and the alluring people who lived in them.

Memories of French Palaces

Psyche's Palace: How the Brain Generates the Light of the Soul

This pioneering theoretical model of consciousness deftly bridges the chasm between science and spirituality--with a bridge of literal and figurative Light. Conventional wisdom in neurobiology holds that the brain is nothing more than a complex biocomputer, whose neurons' sole purpose is to process and transmit information. Psyche's Palace proposes a new theory--that the brain creates this brilliant sound and light show directly upon the convoluted surfaces of the cerebral cortex. A filigree of sparkling pixels suspended in the crystal-clear fluid of the cerebral cortex forms the live and luminous theater in which the external world is continuously recreated. Everything you see and hear and feel must be sculpted directly from the bioluminescence of vast, oscillating networks of neurons. The brain is simply the material substrate that holds the exuberance in place. What if it actually is true--what the wise have always said--that YOU ARE the pure Light of consciousness that shines within?