The World Beyond Your Head

In this brilliant follow-up, Matthew Crawford, author of the bestselling Shop Class As Soulcraft, investigates the challenge of mastering one's own mind

We often complain about our fractured mental lives and feel beset by outside forces that destroy our focus and disrupt our peace of mind. Any defence against this, Crawford argues, requires that we reckon with the way attention sculpts the self. He examines the intense concentration of hockey players and short-order cooks, the quasi-autistic behaviour of gambling addicts, the familiar hassles of daily life, and the deep, slow craftwork of building pipe organs. He shows that our current crisis of attention is only superficially the result of digital technology and becomes more comprehensible when understood as the culmination of…