#13 in Psychology
Stolen Focus
- 352
- Pages
- about 6 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 3 weeks on the list, peaked at #7
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Our view
“Stolen Focus” argues that our scattered attention is less a personal failing than the work of forces no one can beat by willpower alone. Hari mixes his own spell of living without technology with interviews of researchers, ranging from sleep to children’s free play. It is not a self-help manual, and some readers find the opening slow to take hold. For anyone ready to treat attention as a public issue.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
THE SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A SPECTATOR AND FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2022 'If you read just one book about how the modern world is driving us crazy, read this one' TELEGRAPH 'This book is exactly what the world needs right now' OPRAH WINFREY 'A beautifully researched and argued exploration of the breakdown of humankind's ability to pay attention' STEPHEN FRY 'A really important book . . . Everyone should read it' PHILIPPA PERRY Why have we lost our ability to focus? What are the causes? And, most importantly, how do we get it back? For Stolen Focus, internationally bestselling author Johann Hari went on a three-year journey to uncover the reasons behind our shortening attention spans. He interviewed the leading experts in the world on attention, and learned that everything we think about this subject is wrong. We think our inability to focus is a personal failing – a flaw in each one of us. It is not. This has been done to all of us by powerful external forces. Our focus has been stolen. Johann discovered there are twelve deep causes of this crisis, all of which have robbed some of our attention. He shows us how in a thrilling journey that ranges from Silicon Valley dissidents, to a favela in Rio where attention vanished, to an office in New Zealand that found a remarkable way to restore our attention. Crucially, he learned how – as individuals, and as a society – we can get our focus back, if we are determined to fight for it.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.1 across 330 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 69% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Psychology average of 7.9. That is how 8.0 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.2 | 13 | 4% |
| Hardcover | 8.1 | 317 | 96% |
Frequently asked
How long is Stolen Focus?
It has 352 pages — shorter than 52% of the ranked books in Psychology.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Psychology — with scores between 8.0 and 8.2, closest to this book.
