The Sirens' Call - by Chris Hayes (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The #1 New York Times Bestseller - One of Barack Obama's Summer Reading List Picks

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author and MSNBC and podcast host, a powerful wide-angle reckoning with how the assault from attention capitalism on our minds and our hearts has reordered our politics and the very fabric of our society

"An ambitious analysis of how the trivial amusements offered by online life have degraded not only our selves but also our politics." --New York Times

"Brilliant book . . . Reading it has made me change the way I work and think." --Rachel Maddow

"A useful primer on how social media and the attention economy have warped our democracy and reshaped our lives." --Barack Obama

We all feel it--the distraction, the loss of focus, the addictive focus on the wrong things for too long. Something has changed utterly: For most of human history, the boundary between public and private has been clear, at least in theory. Now, as Chris Hayes writes, "With the help of a few tech firms, we basically tore it down in about a decade." Hayes argues that we are in the midst of a transi­tion whose only parallel is that of labor in the nineteenth century: Attention has become a commodified resource extracted from us, and from which we are increasingly alienated. The Sirens' Call is the big-picture vision we urgently need to offer clarity and guidance.

Sirens are designed to compel us, and now they are going off in our bedrooms and kitchens at all hours of the day and night, doing the bidding of vast empires, the most valuable companies in history, built on harvesting human attention. As Hayes shares, "Now our deepest neurological structures, human evolution­ary inheritances, and social impulses are in a habitat designed to prey upon, to cultivate, distort, or destroy that which most fundamentally makes us human." The Sirens' Call is the book that snaps everything into a single holistic frame­work so that we can wrest back control of our lives, our politics, and our future.

Review Quotes

"Chris Hayes's spirited new book, The Sirens' Call, takes a strong stand against the temptations of social media and information overload, on the grounds that the human attention span is ill equipped to absorb and act on such a constant stream of data. Among other things, the book--already a best seller, and one of our recommended titles this week--reveals that Hayes has abandoned scrolling for the old-fashioned pleasure of reading the newspaper in print each day, which sounds like a pretty good prescription to this fan of old media." --Gregory Cowles, The New York Times

"The Sirens' Call is a provocative book, readable and well-argued and alarming. Hayes thinks that 'even the most panicked critics' of tech haven't yet reckoned with the full breadth of its disruption, with the vast transformation it has wrought on both our public and inner lives. The book takes big swings--at political and economic regimes--but it's also quite intimate. Reading it, I thought a lot about my son . . . I don't want my son's consciousness in the custody of Google and Meta and ByteDance and Apple; I want it to belong to him." --The Washingtonian

"Chris Hayes persuasively and heartrendingly argues . . . it has become almost impossible to 'agree' to attend to anything in the true, voluntary sense of that word . . . This book is Hayes's attempt at sounding the alarm, one befitting a great fire, to remind us what's at stake . . . His writing comes alive with an emotional truth . . . with passion and erudition." --The Washington Post

"A fascinating history of what [Hayes] calls the attention age . . . A timely guide that's not just about the attention industry that social media is consuming. He also explains the impact that the fight for attention is having on the consumers themselves . . . A unique approach to a topic that is on everyone's minds, but avoids feeling like a retread of already mined material on the topic." --AP News

"Hayes offers a sharper and more politically acute analysis of the problem. We are living in what he calls the 'attention age' and, with an infinite stream of information, everyone is clamoring to get our attention . . . It is Hayes' argument about the effect on politics of this war for attention that I found most arresting . . . We have created a public that has difficulty sustaining any kind of focus at all, quite the opposite of the initial hope for the internet that the wisdom of the crowd would radically democratize global conversations." --Financial Times

"An ambitious analysis of how the trivial amusements offered by online life have degraded not only our selves but also our politics . . . Attention isn't a resource like coal or oil, which exist outside us; attention is what makes us human, Hayes maintains, and this particular stage of capitalism is fueled by a fracking of our minds." --Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

"Casting a wide net that encompasses philosophers, media theorists, psychologists, and classic literature . . . Hayes unpacks how attention is both a force integral to survival and a resource so sought after that it has become like 'gold in a stream, oil in a rock.' . . . Relatable and amusing . . . A savvy . . . meditation on the modern attention economy." --Publishers Weekly

"[Hayes'] facility for lucid synthesis is put to gratifying use in this smart, constructive book . . . He carefully charts how the churning monetization of attention has fundamentally changed news, politics, and leisure time, turning our communications landscape into a kind of 'failed state' where common-sense norms have been routed by 'attentional warlordism.' Amid the virtual maelstrom, Hayes wants to help readers reclaim a measure of mental tranquility . . . An intelligent, forward-looking analysis of our increasing inability to stay focused." --Kirkus Reviews

"Hayes's latest book is part warning, part philosophical inquiry, and a valuable contribution to a growing chorus of works that examines the enfeeblement of attention in the digital age . . . Hayes writes with the urgency of someone keenly aware that the fight for attention is, at its core, a fight for control over our inner lives . . . The Sirens' Call reminds readers that the reclamation of attention is both a paramount personal challenge--one that calls us to inhabit moments more fully and resist the pull of fragmentation--and an essential societal endeavor. This book deserves yours." --The American Prospect

"Chris Hayes sees around corners--not just naming and explaining but also solving problems that the rest of us are only starting to sense. The Sirens' Call is his biggest idea yet, and his most urgent. Reading it has made me change the way I work and think. Brilliant book." --Rachel Maddow, host of the Emmy Award-winning Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Prequel, Blowout, and Drift

"Attention has always been an undervalued commodity, yet it's the very foundation of a meaningful life. In The Sirens' Call, Chris Hayes uses his keen intellect and knowledge of history to show how the war over our attention is undermining us 24/7. What is the antidote for the urge to constantly grab what he calls 'the little attention box' in our pockets? Read this book to find out!" --Katie Couric, award-winning journalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Going There

"With dazzling knowledge and insight, Chris Hayes not only diagnoses our growing social alienation but provides a path to sanity. If you long for something that will hold your attention and even help restore it, then read this utterly compelling and enlightening book." --David Grann, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Wager and Killers of the Flower Moon

"Chris Hayes has diagnosed the critical ill of our age--and no one is better positioned to understand and explain it. A profoundly careful and informed thinker, Hayes lives the disease he diagnoses. The depth of his insight, and urgency of his message, are essential reading for our time--if we can muster the attention that careful thinking demands." --Lawrence Lessig, Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership, Harvard Law School

About the Author

Chris Hayes is the Emmy Award-winning host of All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC and the New York Times bestselling author of A Colony in a Nation and Twilight of the Elites. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and children.