Stolen Focus

The Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. "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. Worth your time and certainly worth your focus." - 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? In "Stolen Focus," internationally bestselling author Johann Hari embarked on a three-year journey to uncover the reasons behind our shortening attention spans. He interviewed leading experts on attention and learned that everything we think about this subject is wrong. We often believe 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 us of our attention. He takes us on 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—both as individuals and as a society—we can regain our focus if we are determined to fight for it.