The book is based on a study of people's memories of the Challenger explosion, and compares these 'flashbulb' memories with those of normal events.

Preface; List of contributors; 1. Introduction Eugene Winograd; Part I. Empirical Studies: 2. Phantom flashbulbs: false recollections of hearing the news about Challenger Ulric Neisser and Nicole Harsch; 3. Potential flashbulbs: memories of ordinary news as the baseline Steen F. Larsen; 4. Flashbulb memories: confidence, consistency, and quantity John Neil Bohannon III and Victoria Louise Symons; Part II. Developmental Studies: 5. Developmental issues in flashbulb memory research: children recall the Challenger event Amye Richelle Warren and Jeffery N. Swartwood; 6. Preschool children's memories of personal circumstances: the fire alarm study David B. Pillemer; Part III. Emotion and Memory: 7. A proposed neurobiological basis for regulating memory storage for significant events Paul E. Gold; 8. Remembering the details of emotional events Daniel Reisberg and Friderike Heuer; 9. Do flashbulb memories differ from other types of emotional memories? Sven-Åke Christianson; 10. Why do traumatic experiences sometimes produce good memory (flashbulbs) and sometimes no memory (repression)? Elizabeth F. Loftus and Leah Kaufman; Part IV. Theoretical Issues: 11. Special versus ordinary memory mechanisms in the genesis of flashbulb memories Michael McCloskey; 12. Remembering personal circumstances: a functional analysis David B. Pillemer; 13. Constraints on memory David C. Rubin; 14. The theoretical and empirical status of the flashbulb memory hypothesis William F. Brewer; Author index; Subject index.