Attention crisis

It is now more unlikely than ever before that you will read this review in one sitting (if, that is, you read it at all). The subway conductor is announcing a delay, your cell phone is buzzing, a television is flickering; focusing, for a page, for a paragraph, has never been harder.

We are living through, says Matthew Crawford, a “crisis of attention,” and while he is not the first to comment upon it, his new book, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction, is among the most thorough, wide-ranging, and deeply considered analyses of this aspect of our cultural moment.

Crawford is a product of the University of Chicago’s prestigious Committee on Social Thought who forsook the Ivory Tower for the mechanic’s garage (he currently operates a motorcycle repair shop in Richmond, Virginia, and, for propriety’s sake, is also a fellow at the...