Brilliantly combining memoir, biography, and original reporting, Attention looks beyond the ways technology has infiltrated our lives to grapple with the larger questions of what attention is and what it means to give it away. Schwartz details the decade she spent taking prescription pills to help her pay attention (or so she thought), and considers the wider landscape of attention from past to present. From our craving for distraction to our craving for a cure, from Silicon Valley to psychedelics to the works and lives of writers like David Foster Wallace, Aldous Huxley, William James, and Simone Weil, who each wrote powerfully about attention’s role in defining our lives, Schwartz acts as our sympathetic and qualified guide. Attention will resonate with readers who want to determine their own minds, and look away from the siren call of their screens.