WASHINGTON

By the time you get to the end of this column, your brain will have physically changed.

You will either be on the Curve of Forgetting or the Path to the Memory Palace.

Joshua Foer’s book “Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything” — just published and already No. 3 on the Amazon.com best-seller list — is both fun and reassuring. All it takes to have a better memory, he contends, are a few tricks and a good erotic imagination.

The 28-year-old author, who got a $1.2 million advance and a movie option, honed his mnemonic skills in the basement of his parents’ house. He is the youngest of the famous trio of literary Foer brothers, so accomplished so...