Stolen Focus

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.