The following version of this book was used to create the guide: Gabbert, Elisa. The Unreality of Memory. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.

Elisa Gabbert's The Unreality of Memory is a collection of 13 titled essays. The included essays each possess their own form, structure, and style. Gabbert embraces a range of tonal registers throughout the text, yet her first person perspective guides the reader from one discussion and consideration to the next. Through the text, Gabbert presents a range of historic, scientific, and sociological information, and thus alternates between the past and the present tenses. The following guide relies upon the present tense and a streamlined mode of exploration.

In Part One, "Magnificent Desolation," after Gabbert watches a simulation of the Titanic sinking on YouTube, she becomes obsessed with researching disasters. She realizes that her addiction to such horrific events might be a facet of her human nature.

In "Doomsday Pattern," Gabbert considers the ways in which the Manhattan Project was embraced because of the sheer spectacle it would create. She examines its effects on countless innocent victims.

In "Threats," after reading a piece in The New Yorker about the impending earthquake in the Pacific Northwest, Gabbert begins to wonder how the individual is meant to prepare for upcoming, yet distant tragedies. She wonders if ignoring such tragedies is a mode of survival.

In "Big and Slow," Gabbert discovers a syndrome called megalophobia after encountering images of The Kelpies online. The Kelpies are two enormous horse sculptures located in a Scotland park. The sculptures, Gabbert learns, engender fear in many of their onlookers. She wonders if The Kelpies are another way for individuals to feel horror without feeling threatened.

In "The Great Mortality," Gabbert uses an anecdote about a virus she contracts as a throughway into her explorations regarding climate change.

In Part Two, "The Little Room (Or, The Unreality of Memory)," Gabbert describes her maternal grandmother's old house. She uses these descriptions as a way to consider the slippery nature of memory and thus reality itself.

In "Vanity Project," Gabbert's regard for her own face is the basis for her conversation on the relativity of truth and reality. She notes the way the human face mutates over time, yet remains the individual’s one constant reference point despite such changes.

In "Witches and Whiplash," Gabbert traces the history of hysteria in medical and psychological fields, in order to explore how the collective dictates the individual's reality.

In "Sleep No More," Gabbert’s series of invasive medical procedures act as the throughway into her explorations of pain, awareness, and happiness.

In Part Three, "True Crime," Gabbert reflects upon the ways in which the 2016 presidential election has altered her relationship with the media.

In "I'm So Tired," Gabbert references Roxane Gay's advice column in The New York Times in order to formulate her questions and arguments about compassion fatigue.

In "In Our Midst," Gabbert considers the ways in which information technology has altered the collective's definitions of morality, ethics, and empathy.

In "Epilogue: The Unreality of Time," Gabbert compares and contrasts her ideas with those of French philosopher Henri Bergson. She uses Bergson's theories as a way to underscore the relativity of truth and reality.