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A review by jmcphers
Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallagher
3.0
This is an excellent little book on attention. If you haven't read much about what happens inside your head when you're paying attention, and especially if you aren't sure what it means to pay attention, this book is for you.
The book's author doesn't really speak from a position of any authority. By all appearances, the work that went into this book was as follows:
1) Select an area related to attention (EXAMPLES: creativity, relationships).
2) Interview some experts who think about and/or research the subject of attention as it pertains to the selected domain.
3) Write a chapter summarizing the views of the experts, naming and quoting them liberally.
This is not said to put down the author, for Gallagher has done what none of us have time to do: talk to people who know about focus and relate their insights to our daily lives. The book is down-to-earth and practical, rarely making grandiose statements and carefully embellished with disclaimers.
I found much of the book unsurprising, but it's really my own fault: I read Rapt as a chaser after devouring two other works concerning the brain's function in modern life (The Shallows and Your Brain At Work). The fact is that there's some really remarkable research and thinking about the brain going on right now, and everyone wants a piece of the action: these books all cite many of the same recent studies and bring out many of the same points.
The book's author doesn't really speak from a position of any authority. By all appearances, the work that went into this book was as follows:
1) Select an area related to attention (EXAMPLES: creativity, relationships).
2) Interview some experts who think about and/or research the subject of attention as it pertains to the selected domain.
3) Write a chapter summarizing the views of the experts, naming and quoting them liberally.
This is not said to put down the author, for Gallagher has done what none of us have time to do: talk to people who know about focus and relate their insights to our daily lives. The book is down-to-earth and practical, rarely making grandiose statements and carefully embellished with disclaimers.
I found much of the book unsurprising, but it's really my own fault: I read Rapt as a chaser after devouring two other works concerning the brain's function in modern life (The Shallows and Your Brain At Work). The fact is that there's some really remarkable research and thinking about the brain going on right now, and everyone wants a piece of the action: these books all cite many of the same recent studies and bring out many of the same points.