Casey Schwartz’s examination of attention began with her addiction to Adderall as a college freshman. Schwartz’s second book, Attention, A Love Story, pushes beyond memoir into a more expansive cultural history that combines her experiences with reporting on the broader social understandings of attention. The book launched on April 7, 2020. It was a less-than-ideal pub date, at the height of the pandemic in the US. Yet then and now, Schwartz’s book contends with the crisis of how easily many people give away their attention these days. As she notes, the pandemic has brought this crisis into sharper relief, and has emphasized, for her, the way in which channeling the right kind of attention can help buttress one against ongoing traumas.

PART I.