The Attention Merchants

The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads

| 4.20 | 3,226 ratings and reviews

Recommended by Yuval Noah Harari, Marvin Liao, Rafat Ali, and 4 others. See all reviews

Ranked #40 in Media, Ranked #47 in Internet — see more rankings.

Feeling attention challenged? Even assaulted? American business depends on it. In nearly every moment of our waking lives, we face a barrage of messaging, advertising enticements, branding, sponsored social media, and other efforts to harvest our attention. Few moments or spaces of our day remain uncultivated by the "attention merchants," contributing to the distracted, unfocused tenor of our times. Tim Wu argues that this condition is not simply the byproduct of recent technological innovations but the result of more than a century's growth and expansion in the industries that feed on human... more
Buy on Amazon

Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of The Attention Merchants from the world's leading experts.

Yuval Noah Harari HistorianA very insightful book that surveys the history of modern information technology and its political implications, from the age of print and radio to the era of Google and Facebook. It gives the context of the current battle to control human attention. (Source)

Marvin Liao Partner/500 StartupsI tend to jump from book to book and may switch if I am interested in some new topic. This is a pleasure for me (which I also do benefit work wise from too). It’s quite a random list because I have eclectic interests (or just scatterbrained most likely) on tech business, AI, general global economy, geopolitics, rising Biotech economy & history. I'm basically 15% to 50% into all these books. (Source)

Rafat Ali Have to say @superwuster is best business writer there is. Just finished Master Switch , now reading “Attention Merchants”, the best history-in-context-with-rigor-and-intellectual-analysis writer/explainer there is. If I ever write a book, want to write it like Tim Wu. (Source)

Jeff Bullas Recommends this book

Rankings by Category

The Attention Merchants is ranked in the following categories:

Similar Books

If you like The Attention Merchants, check out these similar top-rated books:

Learn: What makes Shortform summaries the best in the world?

Learn More