Monday, February 2, 2026

Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again

Johann Hari
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Our ability to pay attention is collapsing. From the author of Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections comes a groundbreaking examination of why this is happening—and how to get our attention back.

“The book the world needs in order to win the war on distraction.”—Adam Grant, author of Think Again

“Read this book to save your mind.”—Susan Cain, author of Quiet

WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Post, Mashable, Mindful


In the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions—even abandoning his phone for three months—but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention—and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong.

We think our inability to focus is a personal failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces that have left us uniquely vulnerable to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit. Hari found that there are twelve deep causes of this crisis, from the decline of mind-wandering to rising pollution, all of which have robbed some of our attention. In Stolen Focus, he introduces readers to Silicon Valley dissidents who learned to hack human attention, and veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD. He explores a favela in Rio de Janeiro where everyone lost their attention in a particularly surreal way, and an office in New Zealand that discovered a remarkable technique to restore workers’ productivity.

Crucially, Hari learned how we can reclaim our focus—as individuals, and as a society—if we are determined to fight for it. Stolen Focus will transform the debate about attention and finally show us how to get it back.

(Excerpt from amazon.com)

香港商場的黃金時代

何尚衡
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如欲認識一地之風土人情,常說市集和公園不容錯過。論香港,還該有購物商場。

香港的居住空間普遍狹小,公共與休憩用地規管甚嚴,加上城市規劃等因素,香港商場成為獨特而顯著的多功能消費場所,有大、中、小型者數百。細察香港商場的規劃、功能和設計,猶如觀看一個城市的空間運用、地道消費文化、生活形態及品味的縮影。

香港一直沒有專著論述商場的歷史與發展脈絡,僅有零星的資料和討論散落各處。本書作者研究香港商場逾十年,曾以商場為題撰寫論文,並在社交媒體開設專頁,把研究配上圖片與大眾分享。全書整理自政府和私人機構的官方記錄、報章及雜誌等文獻,亦有從舊照推敲,加上訪問、實地考察,以及歷年的讀者意見,梳理成翔實而圖文並茂的香港商場發展史。

書中先有緒論講解商場的起源和更迭原因,後有對香港商場的綜合分析,並將香港數十個商場以公、私營歸類,各依其落成年份、地理位置編排,詳述其發展與特色,爬梳不同時代的香港商場風格,為研究及理解香港商場歷史與發展的重要著作。

(摘錄自chunghwabook.com.hk)