Category: Non-Fiction Reviews

Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention — and How to Think Deeply Again, by Johann Hari

In Stolen Focus, Johann Hari argues that elements of our existing culture are eroding our ability to concentrate and stealing our ability to truly enjoy life. Hari makes clear that this is not a self help book with an easy recipe for personal improvement. To be sure, there are practices that we all can take up to battle this assault on our focus. However, much of the challenges we face are societal and need a society-wide movement to address them.

Hari explores his own recognition that his focus was being stolen. In an attempt to reclaim it, Hari took a personal months long screen-free technology detox in Provincetown. While somewhat successful in helping Hari reclaim the ability to read books, creatively write, daydream, and sleep again, the effects did not last long past the end of the detox. Hari also recognizes that such an exorcise is not feasible for most of us, and it does not address the root causes of our focus being stolen.

From processed food to environmental pollutants to a lack of unsupervised play, Hari takes us on a tour of factors impacting our attention. In particular, Hari takes a long look at how social media actively uses subconscious techniques to covertly keep us engaged online. Such online engagement is used to feed the profits of the existing “surveillance capitalism” business model. Silicon Valley designers use various tools such as building virtual “voodoo doll” models of individuals to predict our future behavior. Likewise, they use “negativity bias” to keep us engaged by feeding us increasingly negative or fringy content. However, many of these Silicon Valley designers have come to regret their long term impact on society.

“One day, James Williams–the former Google strategist I met–addressed an audience of hundreds of leading tech designers and asked them a simple question: “How many of you want to live in the world you are designing?” There was a silence in the room. People looked around them. Nobody put up their hand.”

But, if this is not the world we want to live in, then what can we do about it? One of the interesting concepts discussed in the book is “cruel optimism.” In our society, we have a tendency to lean on rugged individualism to face problems. While such self-reliance may be admirable in some circumstances, it can be “cruel” when faced with challenges that have deeply rooted societal causes.  Such deeply rooted societal causes often go beyond the ability for us to address on an individual-by-individual basis. With our focus, it is tempting to believe that we are completely in control of our own fate, but Hari argues that there are tremendous societal forces acting against us that need society wide solutions.

— Jim Lynch

Can We Talk About Israel? by Daniel Sokatch

Can We Talk About Israel?: A Guide for the Curious, Confused, and Conflicted was written by Daniel Sokatch, an American Jewish activist and CEO of the New Israel Fund since 2009. His aim with this book, as he states in the first chapter, is to break down the conflict between Israel and Palestine into a thorough but understandable narrative so that the average uninvolved (but interested) person can understand it enough to participate in discussion to some degree.  

Based on the fact that our group had several interesting discussions about it, I think he achieved that goal.  

The first half of the book starts at the very beginning – God telling Abraham of Canaan – and steps through the full history of the conflict, highlighting the major incidents, competing interests and philosophies, milestone events, and most notable leaders on both sides to the present day. Though it was definitely engaging, this part was so full of facts that it was hard to stay focused and keep the details straight. Overall, it left us with a better understanding of the motivations and emotions behind both sides.  

The second half went into greater detail about the “current” state of the conflict, such as it was in 2021 when the book was published. Sokatch stated that he endeavored to present it in a balanced way, and we felt that he achieved this also (or as our Bill Smith said, as even-handed a resource as we’re likely to find). We learned about the carved-up and walled-off map of the territory, the political climate and living conditions of the major hubs, the bond between America and Israel, the creeping Israeli Settlements, the debates around apartheid and BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel), what constitutes antisemitism versus fair criticism of Israel, and so much more. None of it told us how to feel, which is not a comfortable place for Americans who are used to being able to claim one position or another for every issue.  

Much has happened since the book was published, most notably the attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7th, 2023, which is still a full-scale conflict at this moment. Sokatch continues to weigh in on the subject on the website for The New Israel Fund, an organization which was established in 1979 and “designed to expand the work that the United Jewish Appeal was then doing … to protect Israel’s strength by protecting democracy, human rights, justice, and equality for all Israelis – Jews and Arabs” (from jewishvirtuallibrary.org). His latest post can be found here: https://www.nif.org/blog/finding-light-in-the-darkness/. In it, he makes a statement that I find to be somewhat more hopeful than the last chapter of the book, which was titled “The Case for Hope.”  

President Biden has offered us a light in this darkness. But there is another light, one that shines today in the darkness in Israel: Activists in Israeli civil society—regular Israelis, Arab and Jews, seeking a better, shared future—are leading the way towards a different path—especially grantees like Standing Together, Combatants for Peace, Bereaved Parents—Families Forum, Breaking the Silence, and Yesh Din—who either are co-led by Arabs and Jews or have worked hand in hand with Palestinians for years.  

They know that Israelis share the responsibility for envisioning a horizon where tomorrow is better than today—for everyone. 

On December 20, 2023, my daughter came home from college on Christmas break and we didn’t get through one full day before the issue of Israel/Palestine came up at the dinner table. I was glad to be able to understand her fervent opinion and offer thoughts of my own, which I would not have been comfortable doing if not for this book. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning more. 

— Julie Feirer

Poverty by America, by Matthew Desmond

Matthew Desmond puts the central question of his book this way: 

“This is who we are: the richest country on earth, with more poverty than any other advanced democracy. If America’s poor founded a country, that country would have a bigger population than Australia or Venezuela. Almost one in nine Americans – including one in eight children – live in poverty…. Books about poverty tend to be books about the poor. It’s been this way for more than a hundred years…. Bearing witness, these kinds of books help us understand the nature of poverty. They are vital.  But they do not – and in fact cannot – answer the most fundamental question, which is: Why? Why all this American poverty?”

That IS the question. And this book is important because Desmond takes great pains to examine all of the supposed root causes of poverty in this land of plenty. One by one he refutes the arguments (and mostly pejorative arguments) about why people in this country are poor. And he comes to the conclusion that the reason why we have poverty in this country is that we like it that way. Too many of us profit from the penury of our neighbors.

Desmond outlines how we, the not-poor in this country, undercut workers, how we force the poor to pay more, how we rely on welfare, how we buy opportunity. He ends with three powerful chapters exhorting us to invest in ending poverty by empowering the poor and tearing down the walls that separate us.

The book is exhaustively researched and documented. Fully one-third of the pages in the book are devoted to citations of studies, quotes and powerful examples that shore up his statistics. And Desmond is angry. He wants us to be ashamed of ourselves. He wants us to become poverty abolitionists. 

“There are a good many challenges facing this big, wide country, but near the top of the list must be concerns about basic needs. We must ask ourselves – and then ask our community organizations, our employers, our places of worship, our schools, our political parties, our courts, our towns, our families: What are we doing to divest from poverty? Every person, every company, every institution that has a role in perpetuating poverty also has a role in ameliorating it. The end of poverty is something to stand for, to march for, to sacrifice for. Because poverty is the dream killer, the capability destroyer, the great waster of human potential. It is a misery and a national disgrace, one that belies any claim to our greatness. The citizens of the richest nation in the world can and should finally put an end to it. We don’t need to outsmart this problem. We need to outhate it.”

Yes, this is an important book. A really important book. I wish everyone would read it and begin to think, “What can I do today to be a poverty abolitionist?”

— Jeanie Smith