ATTENTION ATTENTION REVIEW PROFESSIONAL

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the 'human holocaust' of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. If they are not, itвЂ™s a brilliant satire.Д®lie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children. If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project. The world may be like this at times, but often it isnвЂ™t. We are told, for instance, to вЂњbe conspicuous at all cost,вЂќ then told to вЂњbehave like others.вЂќ More seriously, Greene never really defines вЂњpower,вЂќ and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught.

Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when itвЂ™s used against you. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: вЂњConceal Your Intentions,вЂќ вЂњAlways Say Less Than Necessary,вЂќ вЂњPose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,вЂќ and so on. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the worldвЂ™s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.Д®veryone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). Schwartz helps us think deeply and clearly about what it offers us. Even though the author has вЂњyet to enroll in a digital detox,вЂќ she points the way toward вЂњhelpful digital minimalism strategies.вЂќД«eing attentive is an acquired skill. While techno-distractedness is not the sole province of the young, those who have known no other reality in their brief lives would seem to be most susceptible to the allure of Silicon Valley's steady stream of creations, each designed to be irresistible. By personalizing her account, and her journey, she enhances the book's potency without diluting its authority. The author is unfailingly honest about her own addiction to the iPhone and her vulnerabilities and self-doubt. Schwartz writes that the chief ingredients of attention are curiosity and joy and that attention is not only about having a meaningful life, but being in the moment, deriving pleasure from the very act of being absorbed in one's observations rather than burying one's self in a device.

A frequent contributor to the New York Times, Schwartz asks questions of singular significance: 'Why are we so susceptible to all the escape routes our technologies offer us in the first place? What are we fleeing?' With a critical and open mind, the author assesses the works of such disparate writers as David Foster Wallace, Simone Weil, William James, and Aldous Huxley, and she applies no less rigor to exploring attention with such avatars of expanded consciousness as Stanislav Grof and Gabor MatГ©. Splintered attention and perpetual interruption are the norm. In the process, she began to realize that the way all of us pay attention in this technological era had changed.

ATTENTION ATTENTION REVIEW PROFESSIONAL

A personal and professional study of the struggle with attention in an age of distraction.ДЄfter recounting her decadelong addiction to Adderall, journalist Schwartz ( In the Mind Fields: Exploring the New Science of Neuropsychoanalysis, 2015) goes in search of attention in all its rather elusive manifestations, investigating its power to define a human life.

Attention attention review