Attention, A Love Story
Available April 7th
“With fascinating research and illuminating interviews, this is ruminative, provocative, and discussion worthy.”
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.
Reviews
Schwartz (In the Mind Fields, 2015) spent ten years using the ADHD drug Adderall, "attention weaponized, slashing through procrastination and self-doubt." Written in the aftermath of quitting the drug, which she begin taking in college, this book expands on Schwartz's New York Times Magazine article "Generation Adderall" to examine attention as both a concept and an action, especially in our smartphone-obsessed era. "Stripped of my pills in an age of distraction, what did it even mean to pay attention?" Schwartz's question takes her on a far-reaching journey through the work of scientists, scholars, physicians, philosophers, and writers. She finds an obsession with attention in the words of David Foster Wallace and Aldous Huxley. She studies what the psychedelic movement did for tuning in, and the ways in which the more recent trend of microdosing with LSD is an exercise in focusing. As Schwartz's quest began on a personal note, so it ends, as a family crisis preoccupies her on a Central American ayahuasca retreat. With fascinating research and illuminating interviews, this is ruminative, provocative, and discussion- worthy.
- Booklist
Attention: A Love Story had me rapt. Casey Schwartz is a formidable reporter, a rigorous researcher and a true artist of prose. She makes complicated information easily understood and elevates seemingly simple observations to a richer plain of meaning. More than that, though (and this is the toughest job in the business) she is an honest broker when it comes to telling her own story. Unflinching yet never confessional, this book took me to uncomfortable places but always in the most capable hands. It’s the finest of its kind I’ve read in ages.
- Meghan Daum, author of The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through The New Culture Wars
An extraordinary and moving treatment of that most ineffable of topics: our own attention and how we spend it. Schwartz has successfully mixed her own experiences with Tom Wolfe-like journalism to create an utterly engaging read.
- Tim Wu, author of The Attention Merchants
An insightful hybrid of memoir and academic study . . . Thought-provoking . . . This is a rich inquiry into what it means to pay (and maintain) attention in a world increasingly permeated with distraction and interference.
- Publisher’s Weekly
A personal and professional study of the struggle with attention in an age of distraction . . . Unfailingly honest . . . By personalizing her account, and her journey, [Schwartz] enhances the book's potency without diluting its authority . . . Being attentive is an acquired skill. Schwartz helps us think deeply and clearly about what it offers us.
- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Essential . . . Attention: A Love Story asks two simple questions: ‘Why are we so susceptible to all the escape routes our technologies offer us in the first place?’ and ‘What are we fleeing?'