Dave Farrow

At twenty-one, in 1996, Dave Farrow recalled the order of fifty-two shuffled decks of playing cards, 2,704 in all, from a single sighting, and took the Guinness World Record for it. Someone beat the mark in 2002, so on 2 April 2007 he took it back in front of Discovery Channel Canada's cameras at CTV's Toronto studios, this time with fifty-nine decks, 3,068 cards. Brainhacker: Master Memory, Focus, Emotions, and More to Unleash the Genius Within, published by BenBella Books on 28 February 2023, lays out the recall system he calls the Farrow Method alongside chapters on attention, sleep and anxiety, and is framed by his account of being diagnosed with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder at fourteen. Farrow is Canadian, and the method is his own rather than a clinical protocol. He sells it: Farrow Memory, the training company he runs, offers the courses the book sets out, and he owns a public relations firm, FarrowPR, in Buffalo, New York.