Attention: A Personal History of Finding Focus (or Trying To)
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
"A rich inquiry into what it means to pay (and maintain) attention in a world increasingly permeated with distraction and interference.” —Publisher’s Weekly
Combining expert storytelling with genuine self-scrutiny, Casey Schwartz details the decade she spend taking Adderall to help her pay attention (or so she thought) and then considers the role of attention in defining our lives as it has been understood by thinkers such as William James, David Foster Wallace, and Simone Weil. From our craving for distraction to our craving for a cure, from Silicon Valley consultants and psychedelic researchers to the findings of trauma expert Dr. Gabor Maté, Schwartz takes us on an eye-opening tour of the modern landscape of attention.
Blending memoir, biography, and original reporting, Schwarz examines her attempts to preserve her authentic life and decide what is most important in it. Attention: A Love Story will resonate with readers who want to determine their own minds, away from the siren call of their screens.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Schwartz (In the Mind Fields) presents an insightful hybrid of memoir and academic study on the subject of attention. She approaches her topic from the perspective of a person who began abusing Adderall in college, recounting her multiple attempts at quitting she finally succeeded after a decade of use before moving on to others' stories. These include a psychiatrist who, with intent focus, learned to interpret the initially indecipherable communications of an aphasiac stroke patient, and famous authors who have written about the subject, such as David Foster Wallace and Aldous Huxley. Thankfully, Schwartz goes light on the overexposed subject of the internet's effects on the attention span. When she does discuss this, it's with thought-provoking research, including work done by Tristan Harris, Google's "design ethicist," who writes about how apps and websites are engineered to monopolize their users' attention. The narrative takes an odd turn near the end, as Schwartz recounts dealing with a family crisis with no particular bearing on the subject of attention, before visiting a spiritual retreat in Central America. Nonetheless, this is a rich inquiry into what it means to pay (and maintain) attention in a world increasingly permeated with distraction and interference.
