A Barack Obama Summer Reading Pick 2025

From New York Times bestselling author and television and podcast host, a powerful, wide-angle reckoning with how the assault from attention capitalism on our minds and our hearts has reordered our politics and the very fabric of our society.

We all feel it — the distraction, the loss of focus, the addictive focus on the wrong things for too long. We bump into the zombies on their phones in the street, and sometimes they’re us. We stare in pity at the four people at the table in the restaurant, all on their phones, and then we feel the buzz in our pocket. Something has changed utterly: for most of human history, the boundary between public and private has been clear, at least in theory. Now, as Chris Hayes writes, ‘With the help of a few tech firms, we basically tore it down in about a decade.’ Hayes argues that we are in the midst of an epoch-defining transition: attention has become a commodified resource extracted from us, and from which we are increasingly alienated.

Because there is a breaking point. Sirens are designed to compel us, and now they are going off in our bedrooms and kitchens at all hours of the day and night, doing the bidding of vast empires, the most valuable companies in history, built on harvesting human attention. The Sirens’ Call is the big book we all need to wrest back control of our lives, our politics, and our future.

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‘Chris Hayes’s spirited new book, The Sirens’ Call, takes a strong stand against the temptations of social media and information overload, on the grounds that the human attention span is ill equipped to absorb and act on such a constant stream of data. Among other things, the book … reveals that Hayes has abandoned scrolling for the old-fashioned pleasure of reading the newspaper in print each day, which sounds like a pretty good prescription to this fan of old media.’

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‘[Hayes’] facility for lucid synthesis is put to gratifying use in this smart, constructive book … Amid the virtual maelstrom, Hayes wants to help readers reclaim a measure of mental tranquility … An intelligent, forward-looking analysis of our increasing inability to stay focused.’

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‘Relatable and amusing … The result is a savvy, if somewhat free-form, meditation on the modern attention economy.’

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‘Perhaps the most sophisticated contribution to the genre … Hayes is right to deplore the commodification of intellectual life. But one can wonder whether ideas are less warped by the market when they are posted online to a free platform than when they are rolled into books, given bar codes, and sold in stores … The panic over lost attention is, however, a distraction.’

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‘Hayes persuasively and heartrendingly argues … In perhaps the most surprising section of the book, Hayes examines his life as a famous person, one who involuntarily attracts the attention of strangers when he walks down the street. Here his writing comes alive with an emotional truth, an unflattering one offered in the service of his subject.’

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‘An ambitious analysis of how the trivial amusements offered by online life have degraded not only our selves but also our politics … Pragmatic.’

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‘Hayes offers a sharper and more politically acute analysis of the problem. We are living in what he calls the “attention age” and, with an infinite stream of information, everyone is clamouring to get our attention … It is Hayes’ argument about the effect on politics of this war for attention that I found most arresting … We have created a public that has difficulty sustaining any kind of focus at all, quite the opposite of the initial hope for the internet that the wisdom of the crowd would radically democratise global conversations.’

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‘An intelligent and highly readable book.’

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‘The Sirens’ Call is persuasive, important, and wise.’

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‘The Sirens’ Call is a provocative book, readable and well-argued and alarming. Hayes thinks that “even the most panicked critics” of tech haven’t yet reckoned with the full breadth of its disruption, with the vast transformation it has wrought on both our public and inner lives. The book takes big swings — at political and economic regimes — but it’s also quite intimate. Reading it, I thought a lot about my son … I don’t want my son’s consciousness in the custody of Google and Meta and ByteDance and Apple; I want it to belong to him.’

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‘In Chris Hayes’s recent book, The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource, the political commentator identifies what’s going on for all of us — and the dangers.’

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‘A fascinating history of what [Hayes] calls the attention age … A timely guide that’s not just about the attention industry that social media is consuming. He also explains the impact that the fight for attention is having on the consumers themselves … A unique approach to a topic that is on everyone’s minds, but avoids feeling like a retread of already mined material on the topic.’

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‘Hayes’s latest book is part warning, part philosophical inquiry, and a valuable contribution to a growing chorus of works that examines the enfeeblement of attention in the digital age … Hayes writes with the urgency of someone keenly aware that the fight for attention is, at its core, a fight for control over our inner lives … The Sirens’ Call reminds readers that the reclamation of attention is both a paramount personal challenge — one that calls us to inhabit moments more fully and resist the pull of fragmentation — and an essential societal endeavour. This book deserves yours.’

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‘We are mere cogs in the machine of “attention capitalism” … Chris Hayes is onto something here, arguing that we are in an epoch-defining transition. Have we destroyed a generation? And how do we reclaim our minds?’

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‘Hayes is especially good on why we should understand our attention as a valuable resource. He offers plenty of meaty bits on just how manipulated we are, why we feel so alienated despite the net’s instant access to billions of people, and how the duplicitous online shoutiness of our particular moment keeps pulling people in.’

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‘In short, attention is now a commodity to be appropriated — with dire implications for our private and political lives — and the smartphone is the facilitator, allowing Orwellian Trump-speak to go largely unchecked. Apart from wax, Hayes posits different ways of resisting the siren’s relentless call.’

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‘Hayes recounts the vast efforts by organisations to grab our attention — particularly but not exclusively on screens — leading to a less contented, less self-directed, and more chaotic inner life … The Sirens’ Call is a thought-provoking and often heady book — Hayes references the work of philosophers, economists, authors, and theorists, from Kierkegaard to Noam Chomsky — that will resonate with many readers.’

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‘The Sirens’ Call discusses the attention economy, exploring how our ability to focus has been reshaped by technology, markets, and social forces … What was once an intimate, personal part of our lives has been transformed into a product that is extracted, measured, and monetised, often leading to a deep sense of alienation from ourselves … it does an excellent job of framing attention as a resource under siege and why reclaiming it is more important than ever.’

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‘He's revealed how the very architecture of our information systems is fundamentally reshaping the way we think, communicate, and exist as social beings. As the battle for our attention intensifies, Hayes makes a compelling case that reclaiming our minds isn't just a matter of personal discipline — it requires recognising and confronting the powerful forces that have turned our consciousness into a battleground.’

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‘The book helps us understand the issues in the context of the development of attention markets, which have figured out ways to extract and commodify more of our attention … It seems to me that we cannot tackle a problem until we acknowledge we have a problem. The Sirens’ Call helps us understand the nature of the beast.’