The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource

Author: Christopher L. Hayes

Rating: ⭐ 4/5

Date Read: 2025/03/25

Pages: 336

I appreciate an author that leans into irony. Chris Hayes is a TV newscaster, who earns a living by getting people to pay attention to him and his network (MSNBC).

The Sirens’ Call is a well-researched micro-history of Attention, with the perfect amount of self-inserts from Hayes. This could so easily have gone into the typical “screen time these days, am I right?” line of journalism, but it chose a far more interesting trajectory. I tore through each chapter, because they each functioned as self-contained essays about the impacts of the attention economy.

This book has a lot going on, but I’d say the main topic is the economics of attention, specifically within a system that has an unlimited amount of information. Fascinating, highly recommended.