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anawalt's review
1.0
This is the second time I’ve tried to read this book. I had forgotten why I quit the first time around. Now I remember.
First attempt: 30%
Second attempt: just shy of 50%
The author complains about technology and the lack of slap-stick violent cartoons. He has the same disdain for software in cars that you’ll find in old essays damning cars over horses. He day dreams of times when you got a doctorate to find a spouse. That’s the only reason women go to school, you know. To find a man to bake babies for. Somehow, liberals are to blame for obesity and for divorce, and he conflates Liberalism and Libertarianism. Oh, and the horror of immigrants doing home repairs. Absolute travesty.
The book reads of a midlife crisis: a love affair for motorcycles and big words to hide sub-par thought processes. Not a single chapter came to any sort of conclusion. Rather, he prattled on in a way you could zone out for a few minutes and reread the same sentence in a slightly different format a paragraph or two on.
I really, really wanted to like this. My advice is to avoid.
First attempt: 30%
Second attempt: just shy of 50%
The author complains about technology and the lack of slap-stick violent cartoons. He has the same disdain for software in cars that you’ll find in old essays damning cars over horses. He day dreams of times when you got a doctorate to find a spouse. That’s the only reason women go to school, you know. To find a man to bake babies for. Somehow, liberals are to blame for obesity and for divorce, and he conflates Liberalism and Libertarianism. Oh, and the horror of immigrants doing home repairs. Absolute travesty.
The book reads of a midlife crisis: a love affair for motorcycles and big words to hide sub-par thought processes. Not a single chapter came to any sort of conclusion. Rather, he prattled on in a way you could zone out for a few minutes and reread the same sentence in a slightly different format a paragraph or two on.
I really, really wanted to like this. My advice is to avoid.
lukeswagner's review
5.0
An interesting critique of Enlightenment ideals that have been embedded into modern society. This book is powerful in it's ability to reject ideas that deny us the ability to interact with the world in a meaningful sense. Instead, it offers an understanding of the good life that we are seemingly born with, but have been unable to actualize through the confusion of our current cultural situation.
tomstbr's review against another edition
5.0
A philosophical deep dive into why exactly our attention has been stolen from us. Mandatory reading for the current age. More questions than answers? Good.
sweetcuppincakes's review
4.0
Crawford presents a communitarian critique of liberalism with nary a mention of a single communitarian thinker (nice work!), though coming to conclusions not too far removed from Alasdair MacIntyre. It's essentially relocating the individual without accepting every tenet of individualism (or at least showing how the Enlightenment project's vision of the individual, taken to its logical end, has made us somewhat ill-equipped for our times).
Unfortunately, things seem to meander a bit in his thesis and argumentation, especially just prior to Part III (and some may argue that Part III itself, the detailed recounting of organ makers at work, is a questionable diversion, though I think it does ground his thesis of 'situated knowledge via traditions' [my wording] quite well), he does tie things up more or less nicely in the epilogue.
The one unique contribution to answering the book's subtitle, 'How to Flourish in an Age of Distraction',* namely, the right to not be bombarded at every waking moment with attention-seeking and -destroying adverts, music, and noises, doesn't get as nicely fleshed-out as I would have liked - though the telling of our shared modern predicament is certainly very entertaining, and there are a lot of funny moments in this book, and no shortage of caustic jabs at our corporate distracto-overlords vying for our attention (and blinkering our freedom). And as many have mentioned, the chapter on gambling and casinos' raison d'être and main design principle - to bleed gamblers "to extinction" - is particularly good.
*that's the UK edition subtitle - Crawford seems to have no luck with how his book titles change when published in the UK
Unfortunately, things seem to meander a bit in his thesis and argumentation, especially just prior to Part III (and some may argue that Part III itself, the detailed recounting of organ makers at work, is a questionable diversion, though I think it does ground his thesis of 'situated knowledge via traditions' [my wording] quite well), he does tie things up more or less nicely in the epilogue.
The one unique contribution to answering the book's subtitle, 'How to Flourish in an Age of Distraction',* namely, the right to not be bombarded at every waking moment with attention-seeking and -destroying adverts, music, and noises, doesn't get as nicely fleshed-out as I would have liked - though the telling of our shared modern predicament is certainly very entertaining, and there are a lot of funny moments in this book, and no shortage of caustic jabs at our corporate distracto-overlords vying for our attention (and blinkering our freedom). And as many have mentioned, the chapter on gambling and casinos' raison d'être and main design principle - to bleed gamblers "to extinction" - is particularly good.
*that's the UK edition subtitle - Crawford seems to have no luck with how his book titles change when published in the UK
stellarsphyr's review
2.0
You'll see some one-star reviews claiming boredom or two-star reviews claiming too much "hard philosophy." This book is neither.
What it rather is, is a series of almost interesting conclusions that are brilliantly ran away from lest the author gets too close to actually making a hard point. Perhaps most supportive of this observation is Crawford's "Epilogue" in which he admits that his treatment is only partial and seems to think that since philosophy is really just a method of figuring things out, it's okay to be partial.
It may be okay not to have a complete answer and needing to write to understand, as Cecil Day Lewis might say; however, Crawford is so slipshod with his work that this book is not a partial answer. It is an incomplete tome replete with inadequate arguments. This is not hard philosophy. This is haughty language masquerading as profundity.
This is mostly due to the fact that Crawford simply refuses to actually unpack any of his observations, situate them within the larger conversation, and link that larger conversation to that argument. This ends up being a misapplication or misunderstanding of psychological concepts, misapplication or misunderstanding of economic concepts, a misapplication or misunderstanding of philosophical concepts, and delirious and simplistic non sequiturs that somehow get more treatment than the broad strokes he uses for complex ideas. His situation of the 'nudge' school of economy is woeful and seems to be equivocation (he ends up bringing in virtue and character into an empirical economic discussion, where it does not fully belong), and he does not make it apparent exactly how an empirically researched idea is "wrong," though he claims so. His understanding of Wallace's "This is Water" commencement speech borders college freshman logic and ventures deeply into the land of the straw man. I was shouting at my car stereo while listening to this audio book, pleading with Crawford to see his own contradictions or his insufficient analysis.
Many times Crawford relies on some weird speculation, which, hopefully at the time of his writing he considered to be rhetorically advantageous, ends up sounding more like a conspiracy theorist than a philosopher (e.g., the muzak at your gym is deliberately chosen by a board room of individuals bent on attacking your individuation...or something of that nature). Crawford downright refuses to cite any credible or scholarly sources when there are more than adequate ones (which Gladwell was able to do for The Tipping Point and Kaheman did in Thinking Fast and Slow). It indicates an author more concerned with setting his own head straight than giving anything meaningful to readers (which, again, he readily admits). [This is not to say that this writing isn't useful to you...but it sure as hell isn't entertaining or useful for your readers.]
The worst of this armchair philosophy is that Crawford hides his pseudo-philosophy behind the elevated language of philosophy, which I can only guess is an attempt to obscure the fact that he simply does not give a full treatment to his arguments and ideas (which he has a good one or two, namely Attentional Commons) or the fact that he doesn't quite grasp other concepts well. Essayists are taught to give the illusion of following rabbit holes. What that means is that you might wind around and go up and down but that the path always seems to lead somewhere worthwhile and in a non-jarring way. Crawford is not a writer of rabbit holes. He is a writer who is sitting at a minefield throwing detritus into the field, setting off random chain reactions that seem to start something promising only to prematurely end.
The subtitle of the book seems truly obfuscated throughout. Crawford spends more time detailing the making of organs towards the end of the book than on complex subjects on which there is plenty of evidence and graspable arguments readily available. I mean, dear god, how does someone cherry pick William James without at least accidentally finding the pragmatists (who probably could have answered most of Crawford's questions without bringing this book into the world). Perhaps Crawford actually wanted to write an essay on organs and organists, but someone unfortunately convinced him otherwise.
I gave this book two stars instead of one because I hated it so much, I had to finish it just to do the review a bit of justice. That stoking of passion is admirable, I suppose. Please avoid this book. Please avoid Crawford's ventures into indignant old-man attitudes and pessimism. Please read the aforementioned titles or Charles Peirce and the American pragmatists or actually take a class on existentialism and phenomenology. Or watch some Youtube videos and TED Talks. You will get more out of life doing any of that than subjecting yourself to this argument salad.
What it rather is, is a series of almost interesting conclusions that are brilliantly ran away from lest the author gets too close to actually making a hard point. Perhaps most supportive of this observation is Crawford's "Epilogue" in which he admits that his treatment is only partial and seems to think that since philosophy is really just a method of figuring things out, it's okay to be partial.
It may be okay not to have a complete answer and needing to write to understand, as Cecil Day Lewis might say; however, Crawford is so slipshod with his work that this book is not a partial answer. It is an incomplete tome replete with inadequate arguments. This is not hard philosophy. This is haughty language masquerading as profundity.
This is mostly due to the fact that Crawford simply refuses to actually unpack any of his observations, situate them within the larger conversation, and link that larger conversation to that argument. This ends up being a misapplication or misunderstanding of psychological concepts, misapplication or misunderstanding of economic concepts, a misapplication or misunderstanding of philosophical concepts, and delirious and simplistic non sequiturs that somehow get more treatment than the broad strokes he uses for complex ideas. His situation of the 'nudge' school of economy is woeful and seems to be equivocation (he ends up bringing in virtue and character into an empirical economic discussion, where it does not fully belong), and he does not make it apparent exactly how an empirically researched idea is "wrong," though he claims so. His understanding of Wallace's "This is Water" commencement speech borders college freshman logic and ventures deeply into the land of the straw man. I was shouting at my car stereo while listening to this audio book, pleading with Crawford to see his own contradictions or his insufficient analysis.
Many times Crawford relies on some weird speculation, which, hopefully at the time of his writing he considered to be rhetorically advantageous, ends up sounding more like a conspiracy theorist than a philosopher (e.g., the muzak at your gym is deliberately chosen by a board room of individuals bent on attacking your individuation...or something of that nature). Crawford downright refuses to cite any credible or scholarly sources when there are more than adequate ones (which Gladwell was able to do for The Tipping Point and Kaheman did in Thinking Fast and Slow). It indicates an author more concerned with setting his own head straight than giving anything meaningful to readers (which, again, he readily admits). [This is not to say that this writing isn't useful to you...but it sure as hell isn't entertaining or useful for your readers.]
The worst of this armchair philosophy is that Crawford hides his pseudo-philosophy behind the elevated language of philosophy, which I can only guess is an attempt to obscure the fact that he simply does not give a full treatment to his arguments and ideas (which he has a good one or two, namely Attentional Commons) or the fact that he doesn't quite grasp other concepts well. Essayists are taught to give the illusion of following rabbit holes. What that means is that you might wind around and go up and down but that the path always seems to lead somewhere worthwhile and in a non-jarring way. Crawford is not a writer of rabbit holes. He is a writer who is sitting at a minefield throwing detritus into the field, setting off random chain reactions that seem to start something promising only to prematurely end.
The subtitle of the book seems truly obfuscated throughout. Crawford spends more time detailing the making of organs towards the end of the book than on complex subjects on which there is plenty of evidence and graspable arguments readily available. I mean, dear god, how does someone cherry pick William James without at least accidentally finding the pragmatists (who probably could have answered most of Crawford's questions without bringing this book into the world). Perhaps Crawford actually wanted to write an essay on organs and organists, but someone unfortunately convinced him otherwise.
I gave this book two stars instead of one because I hated it so much, I had to finish it just to do the review a bit of justice. That stoking of passion is admirable, I suppose. Please avoid this book. Please avoid Crawford's ventures into indignant old-man attitudes and pessimism. Please read the aforementioned titles or Charles Peirce and the American pragmatists or actually take a class on existentialism and phenomenology. Or watch some Youtube videos and TED Talks. You will get more out of life doing any of that than subjecting yourself to this argument salad.