Attention ― Dispatches from a Land of Distraction

A wide-ranging, thought-provoking, and rule-bending collection of nonfiction from Joshua Cohen, "a major American writer" (The New York Times) -- a powerful and fresh work of social criticism, reclaiming the power of attention in an age of constant distraction.

Joshua Cohen's first collection of essays, a fully realized work created from a selection of previously published and new nonfiction--essays, memoir, criticism, letters--covers the full depth and breadth of modern life, on subjects ranging from politics, literature, art, music, travel, the media, and psychology, to Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, fictional animals, Gustav Mahler, Aretha Franklin, Edward Snowden, Gordon Lish, the closing of the Ringling Bros. circus, Google, Thomas Pynchon, and Azerbaijan. In essays and short diaries, Cohen directs his sharp gaze out upon the world, exhibiting his extraordinary erudition and ability to draw connections between seemingly unlike things, showing us how to look at a world overflowing with information without becoming daunted. In each piece, Cohen projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his, and a voice as witty, powerful, funny, and distinct as any in American letters.

JOSHUA COHEN was born in 1980 in Atlantic City. He has written novels (Book of Numbers), short fiction (Four New Messages), and nonfiction for The New York Times, Harper's Magazine, London Review of Books, n+1, and others. In 2017 he was named one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists. He lives in New York City.