The Attention Merchants

Reviews

“Comprehensive and conscientious…Wu writes with elegance and clarity…[his] chapters about the early days of advertising are some of this book’s most enjoyable, easily serving as a reader’s companion to “Mad Men.” Mr. Wu concludes his book with a cri de coeur, imploring us to regain custody of our attention, written so rousingly that it just may make you reconsider your priorities.”  
–Jennifer Senior, The New York Times
 
“Compelling…sharp…Wu [is] a skilled thinker…he applies the thesis of a business cycle to explain the development of the advertising market and the ways in which it has adapted to avoid our natural inclination to ignore it…Wu dramatizes this push and pull to great effect…a “Hidden Persuaders” for the 21st century, just as we stand squarely on the threshold of a post-broadcast world where the algorithmic nano-targeting of electronic media knows our desires and impulses before we know them ourselves.”
–Emily Bell, The New York Times Book Review


“A startling and sweeping examination of the increasingly ubiquitous commercial effort to capture and commodify our attention…We’ve become the consumers, the producers, and the content. We are selling ourselves to ourselves.”
—Tom Vanderbilt, The New Republic
 
 
“Illuminating.”
–Jacob Weisberg, The New York Review of Books
 

“Lively…An engrossing study of what we hate about commercial media…Vigorous and amusing, filled with details of colorful hucksterism and cunning attention-grabbing ploys along with revealing insights into the behavioral quirks they instill in us.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
 

“Part history and part social wake up call, this book is for everyone.”
—Library Journal
 

“Forget subliminal seduction: every day, we are openly bought and sold, as this provocative book shows.”
—Kirkus Reviews


“Tim Wu has written a profoundly important book on a problem that doesn’t get enough— well, attention. Attention itself has become the currency of the information age, and, as Wu meticulously and eloquently demonstrates, we allow it to be bought and sold at our peril.” 
–James Gleick, author of Time Travel: A History
 

“I couldn’t put this fascinating book down. Gripping from page one with its insight, vivid writing, and panoramic sweep, The Attention Merchants is also a book of urgent importance, revealing how our preeminent industries work to fleece our consciousness rather than help us cultivate it.”
–Amy Chua, Yale law professor and author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and The Triple Package
 

“Television entranced the masses. Digital media, more insidiously, mesmerizes each of us individually. In this revelatory book, Tim Wu tells the story of how advertisers and programmers came to seize control of our eyes and minds. The Attention Merchants deserves everyone’s attention.”
–Nicholas Carr, author of Utopia Is Creepy and The Shallows

 
“The question of how to get people to care about something important to you is central to religion, government, commerce, and the arts. For more than a century, America has experimented with buying and selling this attention, and Wu’s history of that experiment is nothing less than a history of the human condition and its discontents.”
–Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing Expand reviews