This book is the BEST book to use in order to learn capitals, or the order of the presidents. It teaches with pictures, so that they stay in your memory. I would recommend it to everyone who wants to learn the capitals of America's states.

It was one of the best learning tools I had growing up. The pictures and stories work so well together and truly assisted in learning the capitals and presidents. It was great fun learning with this book. I wish I still had a copy

I brought this book to school and helped my teachers remember the Presidents! Now I run a homework tutor program for children and we have the book available to them. I wish I had the Presidents poster and flash cards!

This book should be in every school library.

I tutor mathematics on the side, and there is great joy in seeing the facial expressions of students go from absolute misery to joy. I am a very strong believer in math tricks.
First, they are fun and magical. Second, they build confidence and curiosity to learn what is behind the magic. And, third, it has much to do with "thinking outside the box". And, contrary to the old stodgy idiots who cannot think out of the box and want to make sure nobody else does either, I think it is time to give students the opportunity to learn and have fun doing so for a change. (Sorry if I offended anyone. On second thought, no, I'm not sorry. Those people deserve to be offended.)

One thing about this book, though, is that it takes a little to digest what is there. Many of the skills there take much practice. There are a few similar books, but I have also considered writing a book that might take various math tricks and bring them out a little more slowly with a little more attention to each one with practice problems, etc.

Thank you so much, Jerry Lucas, wherever you are, for having the wisdom, courage, and love for others to bless others with this book!!!

This book would be great for gifted junior high and high schoolers, and smart, interested math-savvy adults. It is not for the faint of heart.

The calculations Lucas expects you to perform and remember are not easy. For example, he asks you to calculate the logarithm of, say, 17 (base 10) by applying a Taylor series approximation in your head. I've been able to do it, but not without a fair amount of practice. Mathematically gifted children will love it for stretching their abilities, but this 36-year-old loves it as a way to improve his calculating abilities, impress his nerdy friends, and improve his memory of numbers.

Each letter of the Hebrew (Old Testament) and Greek (New Testament) alphabets have a standard numeric value assigned them. By taking the spelling of a word or phrase from the scriptures and then taking the sum of the numeric values, astonishing correlations can be seen. Many key phrases, for example are multiples of 111, which is the number of God. Jesus, spelled in Greek, for example, totals 888.

ANOTHER CODE has been discovered.In this code, the numeric value of a word is taken and then that number is looked up in the Old or New Testament lexicon, revealing amazing correlations, further evidencing God's hand in the authorship of the Bible.

Word 888 in Greek, for example, means "useless," which is how Jesus was treated by his own. Word 890 in Hebrew (just two after) includes the word "useless" in its definition. The theomatic value of the Hebrew spelling of Messiah is 358. Zodhiates (NT Greek Dictionary) gives "useless" as a synonym of word 358 in Greek.

This book has all the memory techniques that are typically taught in memory courses and other memory books. Even if they are sometimes introduced by other names, all of the techniques are variants and combinations of word-substitution (mostly used for foreign words, but also people's names and words that can't easily be pictured), link, peg, loci (sometimes called Roman Room technique) and phonetic (letter for number substitution) systems. The book is mostly re-hashed information that has been presented earlier (even by Lorayne himself), but the writing style makes it a book worth keeping.

The real strength of this book over others of its kind is the dialog between Lucas and Lorayne. They are fun to read and almost never get boring. There are anecdotes to at the beginning of most chapters and spread throughout the book.

Personally, I found Kenneth Higbee's "Your Memory" a better book, it's more complete a reference and gives much more of the why of memory rather than just the how of remembering. Depending on your needs, you might like this book more, it's got more examples on how to use the systems it introduces and is much lighter and a little less dry, although Higbee's book is very readable.

As with every other memory book, the techniques take time to learn and take considerable effort, but work very well. For a book on memory techniques, this book doesn't dissapoint.

This book was an absolute joy to read. The book contains information on mnemonics, pegs, etc. This information is not particularly new, or unique to this book. But I've read other books on the subject and have not gotten as much use from it as I have this book.

In the first few chapters, you'll already begin to memorize things that you thought couldn't be memorized. I still remember a practice list of random objects in the first couple chapters, with no review or real thought about it since I purchased it back about 2 or 3 years ago (I can't remember when I purchased it, but can still remember the list - ironic, no?).

As much as I enjoyed this book and think how much it has helped me...this book did not provide me with solutions to memory issues such as "where I placed my keys" or "where I parked the car". However, I have memorized Pi to over 100 digits now using the techniques of this book.

Overall, this was a great book, as well as an enjoyable read. For memory books of it's genre, I highly recommend it.

It's a fantastic book that will help you instantly to memorize all 50 states in alphabetical order or any number of items on a shopping list (even two days later). But be prepared to spend some time and effort until you will be able to make the system work for you for some "real-life" challenges like giving a speech, improving reading abilities, or memorize difficult vocabularies of a foreign language. If you make the decision to do so, the techniques described will add a lot of value in all areas of your life, especially for those who suffer from a poor memory. The text and the dialogues are written nicely, so it is actually fun to read. Also, the chapters are categorized into specific abilities, like name remembering, again, speeches, etc., which makes it easy to pick your own selection without reading the entire book.

As one with an understanding of Hebrew and Greek, physics, and other universal absolutes, I must say that Del is as close as I've seen. After some 20 years of deeper study, I am convinced that much of it, or at least that that I have been able to research is true. It took turning my back on traditional Western thought and its' belief system to get "churchianity" perceptions out of my head. But as far as Del is concerned, his first book, Theomatics, changed my outlook on Gods' Word forever, and marked a turning point in my life for the better. But, as far as "the Bible code" is concerned, I cannot accept the concept of Armageddon as being nuclear holocaust. The numbers and the languages really don't add up. What is an atomic bomb to the Creator of the universe anyway?. Think about it.

Theomatics shows that there is no viable chance that we exsist at random. And if there is no randomness, then we are not alone. To the degree that the reader understands the significance of "randomness", the greater the impact of the data. Much like the Bible Code Book, washburn shows examples of "links" throughout the Bible. Fasanating reading!

If you have any interest at all in the Bible code subject and have heard all the publicity surrounding the subject, forget everything else. Theomatics is where it is at! The evidence scientifically is much more predictable and provable than ELS. Washburn makes a solid case. It is very unfortunate that the scientific community has not caught wind of this discovery and examined the evidence closely. But to top it all off, theomatics really gets into the heart and mind of God. Those who are critical simply don't understand the subject or have only given it a shallow inspection. The evidence supporting theomatics is solid, credible, substantial, and provable. Theomatics II is truly an outstanding book. Read it and comprehend it and your life will be changed.

I don't have the same criticisms as the previous 2 reviewers. Probably because with Jerry Lucas' background, I expected his book to outline mnemonic techniques and not be a compendium of various learning strategies. Mnemonics are useful for remembering material, just ask any medical student. Just because some techniques are old doesn't mean that they aren't useful. In fact, they have been around this long precisely because they are useful. I used techniques from one of Lucas' previous books, "The Memory Book", in college and found them very helpful for improving recall. This book has many of the same techniques with some new slants. Be selective about the techniques in which you invest your time. I agree that these memory techniques need to be supplemented with other learning strategies but mnemonics has a place in a learner's toolkit as well. I personally thought that this book was good and I am glad that I bought it but there are other books available that teach the same principles for much less money. Kenneth Higbee's book "Your Memory: How It Works and How to Improve It" covers the subject very well.

I wonder if the negative reviews here are based on the title of the book vs the contents? Perhaps if it had been called "Learning How To Memorize" they wouldn't have panned it? But, even if all I do is memorize a list of states and their capitals haven't I learned those facts?

No, this book may not teach problem-solving skills, but what it does teach, how to memorize, it does *very* well.

I almost didn't buy this book because I've had a copy of The Memory Book for decades and figured this would be a rehash. But there's enough new that it's worth it. Plus, it goes into more detail on the Peg Word system and that's helpful.

Chapter 19, Knowing the Day of Any Date, is very cool. That technique is something I use all the time now. I actually figured out a way to calculate the day that (I think) is a little easier than what's explained in the book (write me and I'll send you my secret).

If you want to learn how to memorize facts, figures, phone numbers, or whatever, this book will teach you. The techniques may be 2500 years old, but if you're not familiar with them then they're new to you, eh?

This book will revolutionize the way you think and learn! This book is a must have no matter age, gender or intellectual interest!

Truly effective language learning requires thinking in the target language, not association with sounds and words of your original language. While the Lucas method of memorization may work well for students who want to score high marks on tests, true mastery of a language comes from knowing how its elements are built from the inside, not from constructing superficial outside details that have nothing to do with the language. For example, on page 113, to memorize the Spanish word "medico" (doctor), memorization of the phrase "May I doctor you from over here, Miss Dee, the cobra?" is supposed to help. But isn't it easier (and more helpful) to learn "medico" as a cognate of the English word "medical"? That way, the learner can extrapolate the meaning of other Spanish words similar to "medico" instead of memorizing an entirely different nonsense phrase. When you're in a Spanish airport, trying to catch your flight on time, is fumbling around with Miss Dee the cobra really going to help you?

In Picture Perfect Spanish: A Survival Guide To Speaking Spanish, Jerry Lucas employs an effective system of using pictures to teach more than 600 words of Spanish in such a way as to insure correct pronunciation, along with basic sentence structure, grammar, conjugation. The reader will quickly pick up hundreds of common phrases enabling him or her to speak clear coherent Spanish. This completely "user friendly" and highly recommended manual is the equivalent of one year's beginning Spanish and will have the reader up and running with a working vocabulary and conversational skill far more quickly than the usual classroom approach to beginning Spanish. Picture Perfect Spanish is also the ideal "refresher" reference for those who have once studied Spanish but have forgotten most of what they learned over the intervening years.