{"id":16,"date":"2014-01-28T09:00:12","date_gmt":"2014-01-28T09:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nicholascarr.com\/?page_id=16"},"modified":"2024-06-29T07:34:32","modified_gmt":"2024-06-29T11:34:32","slug":"the-shallows","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.nicholascarr.com\/?page_id=16","title":{"rendered":"The Shallows"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE “MODERN CLASSIC,” NOW AVAILABLE IN AN EXPANDED EDITION<\/strong><\/p>\n

“This is a book to shake up the world.\u201d \u2014Ann Patchett<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Essential reading about our Internet Age.” \u2014New York Times Book Review<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

“A\u00a0book everyone should read.\u201d \u2014American Scientist<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

“I have not only given this book to numerous friends, I actually changed my life in response to it.\u201d \u2014Jonathan Safran Foer<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"Is Google making us stupid? When Nicholas Carr posed that question in a celebrated\u00a0<\/span>Atlantic<\/em>\u00a0essay, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the internet\u2019s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With The Shallows<\/em>, a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction and a New York Times<\/em> bestseller, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the net\u2019s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. The Shallows<\/em> is, writes Slate<\/em>, “a\u00a0Silent Spring<\/em>\u00a0for the literary mind.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

An expanded, tenth-anniversary edition of The Shallows<\/em> was published in 2020. It includes an extensive new afterword that examines how smartphones and social media are influencing our thoughts and emotions.<\/p>\n

Purchase:
\n<\/strong>
\nBookshop.org<\/a>
\nAmazon<\/a>
\nBarnes & Noble<\/a>
\nPowell’s<\/a><\/p>\n

Reviews:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cEditors\u2019 choice.\u201d \u2013New York Times Book Review<\/em><\/p>\n

“One of the most prescient books of the digital age.” \u2013Ezra Klein<\/p>\n

\u201cCarr is a great writer … This is a must-read for any desk jockey concerned about the Web\u2019s deleterious effects on the mind. Grade: A.\u201d \u2013Newsweek<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAbsorbing [and] disturbing. We all joke about how the Internet is turning us, and especially our kids, into fast-twitch airheads incapable of profound cogitation. It’s no joke, Mr. Carr insists, and he has me persuaded.\u201d \u2013John Horgan,\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cNicholas Carr has written a deep book about shallow thinking.\u201d \u2013Daniel J. Flynn,\u00a0The American Spectator<\/em><\/p>\n

“The Shallows<\/em> is a modern classic of internet criticism.” \u2013Leo Mirani, Quartz<\/em><\/p>\n

“This is a lovely story well told \u2014 an ode to a quieter, less frenetic time when reading was more than skimming and thought was more than mere recitation.” \u2013San Francisco Chronicle<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe are living through something of a backlash against the frenzy of attention dispersion, a backlash for which Carr\u2019s book will become canonical.\u201d \u2013Todd Gitlin,\u00a0<\/span>The New Republic<\/em><\/p>\n

“An essential, accessible dispatch about how we think now.\u201d \u2013Laura Miller,\u00a0Salon<\/em><\/p>\n

“Carr\u2019s fresh, lucid, and engaging assessment of our infatuation with the Web is provocative and revelatory.\u201d \u2013Booklist<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you care about your own ability to think and read deeply, please treat yourself to Carr’s book.\u201d \u2013Carol Keeley,\u00a0Ploughshares<\/em><\/p>\n

“Carr is not a proselytizer, and he is no techno-troglodyte. He is a profoundly sharp thinker and writer \u2014 equal parts journalist, psychologist, popular science writer, and philosopher. I have not only given this book to numerous friends, I actually changed my life in response to it.\u201d \u2013Jonathan Safran Foer<\/p>\n

\u201cExplosive.\u201d \u2013Irish Independent<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cCarr [is] a Paul Revere for our Net age.\u201d \u2013USA Today<\/em><\/p>\n

“The Shallows<\/em>\u00a0is a book everyone should read.\u201d \u2013Anna Lena Phillips,\u00a0American Scientist<\/em><\/p>\n

“A persuasive and interesting work.” \u2013Emily St. John Mandel, The Millions<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cCarr\u2019s scope in this unceasingly interesting book is wider than just the \u00a0synapse and the transistor.\u201d \u2013Sam Leith,\u00a0The Sunday Times<\/em>\u00a0(London)<\/p>\n

\u201cRequired reading for anyone who wants a cogent, comprehensive, and thoroughly researched statement of the techno-fears that, in however inchoate a way, many of us have harbored for going on\u00a0a few decades now.\u201d \u2013Daniel Menaker,\u00a0Barnes & Noble Review<\/em><\/p>\n

“Carr provides a deep, enlightening examination of how the Internet influences the brain and its neural pathways … His fantastic investigation of the effect of the Internet on our neurological selves concludes with a very humanistic petition for balancing our human and computer interactions … Highly recommended.” [starred review] \u2013Library Journal<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cCarr\u2019s book is essential. It lays out a sweeping portrait of the thing we\u2019re moving too quickly to see … [It] bursts with research \u2014 from neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists and sociologists \u2014 and careful analysis. And anxious as Carr might be about what the Internet is doing to our brains, his writing isn\u2019t shrill or self-righteous. It\u2019s intelligent, deeply researched, articulate and, much to my dismay, most likely prophetic.\u201d \u2013Kurt Armstrong,\u00a0Paste<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe core of education is this: developing the capacity to concentrate. The fruits of this capacity we call civilization. But all that is finished, perhaps. Welcome to the shallows, where the un-educating of homo sapiens begins. Nicholas Carr does a wonderful job synthesizing the recent cognitive research. In doing so, he gently refutes the ideologists of progress, and shows what is really at stake in the daily habits of our wired lives: the re-constitution of our minds. What emerges for the reader, inexorably, is the suspicion that we have well and truly screwed ourselves.\u201d \u2013Matthew B. Crawford, author of\u00a0Shop Class As Soulcraft <\/em>and The World Beyond Your Head<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe subtitle of Nicholas Carr\u2019s\u00a0The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains<\/em>\u00a0leads one to expect a polemic in the tradition of those published in the 1950s about how rock \u2019n\u2019 roll was corrupting the nation\u2019s youth … But this is no such book. It is a patient and rewarding popularisation of some of the research being done at the frontiers of brain science … Mild-mannered, never polemical, with nothing of the Luddite about him, Carr makes his points with a lot of apt citations and wide-ranging erudition.\u201d \u2013Christopher Caldwell,\u00a0Financial Times<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cCarr\u2019s prescription is not to shove a sandal into the servers that are eroding our brains. Instead, he wants us to take a page from Nathaniel Hawthorne\u2019s notebooks \u2014 the one in which Hawthorne wrote about the way a morning reverie in a spot in Concord known to locals as Sleepy Hollow was shattered when the \u2018startling shriek\u2019 of a locomotive brought \u2018the noisy world into the midst of our slumbrous peace.\u2019 The shrieking railroad has given way to the constant hum and buzz of the information highway, ubiquitous to the point of invisibility. If we want to preserve the health of our brains, we will carve out a \u2018peaceful spot where contemplativeness can work its restorative magic.\u2019 … The medium may be the message, Carr suggests, but only so long as the medium stays hidden. Reveal its inner workings \u2014 and the groupthink or brain damage it can cause \u2014 and we will see the necessity of resisting. We will be empowered to turn Google to our purposes rather than being turned to Google\u2019s.\u201d \u2013Gary Greenberg,\u00a0The Nation<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cMeasured but alarming … Carr brilliantly brings together numerous studies and experiments to support this astounding argument: \u2018With the exception of alphabets and number systems, the Net may well be the single most powerful mind-altering technology that has ever come into general use.” \u2013Will Buchanan,\u00a0Christian Science Monitor<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cNicholas Carr has written an important and timely book. See if you can stay off the web long enough to read it!\u201d \u2013Elizabeth Kolbert, author of\u00a0Field Notes from a Catastrophe <\/em>and The Sixth Extinction<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cNicholas Carr carefully examines the most important topic in contemporary culture\u2014the mental and social transformation created by our new electronic environment. Without ever losing sight of the larger questions at stake, he calmly demolishes the clich\u00e9s that have dominated discussions about the Internet. Witty, ambitious, and immensely readable,\u00a0The Shallows<\/em>\u00a0actually manages to describe the weird, new, artificial world in which we now live.\u201d
\n\u2013Dana Gioia, poet and former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts<\/p>\n

\u201cUsing the web, as I guess most of us do, can be bad for you, says this erudite author; indeed it can actually affect the brain, leaving us more ignorant than we were before, which is the opposite of what it was supposed to achieve. An alarming book.\u201d \u2013Nicholas Bagnall,\u00a0The Telegraph<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYou really should read Nicholas Carr’s\u00a0The Shallows<\/em>\u00a0… Far from offering a series of rants on the dangers of new media, Carr spends chapters walking us through a variety of historical experiments and laymen’s explanations on the workings of the brain . . . He makes the research stand on end, punctuating it with pithy conclusions and clever phrasing.\u201d \u2013Fritz Nelson, Information Week<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cCogent, urgent and well worth reading.\u201d \u2013Kirkus Reviews<\/em><\/p>\n

Publishers:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

U.S. and Canada: W. W. Norton
\nU.K. and Australia: Atlantic Books<\/span>
\nGermany:\u00a0Blessing<\/span>
\nJapan:\u00a0<\/span>Seido Sha<\/span>
\nKorea<\/span>:\u00a0Chungrim<\/span>
\nSpain<\/span>:\u00a0Taurus<\/span>
\nBrazil: Ediouro<\/span>
\nPortugal: Gradiva<\/span>
\nChina<\/span>:\u00a0CITIC<\/span>
\nItaly<\/span>:\u00a0Raffaello Cortina<\/span>
\nFrance:\u00a0<\/span>Robert Laffont<\/span>
\nFinland<\/span>:\u00a0Terra Cognita<\/span>
\nRussia<\/span>:\u00a0Best Business Books<\/span>
\nNetherlands:\u00a0Maven<\/span>
\nVietnam<\/span>:\u00a0Tre<\/span>
\nSlovenia<\/span>:\u00a0Mladinska Knjiga Zaloiba<\/span>
\nBulgaria<\/span>:\u00a0InfoDar<\/span>
\nTaiwan:\u00a0Owl Publishing House<\/span>
\nIndonesia<\/span>:\u00a0Mizan<\/span>
\nCroatia:\u00a0<\/span>Jesenski i Turk<\/span>
\nSerbia<\/span>:\u00a0Heliks<\/span>
\nTurkey<\/span>:\u00a0Ufuk Kitap<\/span>
\nEstonia<\/span>:\u00a0\u00c4rip\u00e4ev<\/span>
\nRomania<\/span>:\u00a0Publica<\/span>
\nPoland<\/span>:\u00a0Helion<\/span>
\nLithuania<\/span>:\u00a0Eugrimas
\nHungary: HVG
\nCzech Republic: Dauphin
\nSaudi Arabia: Page Seven<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE “MODERN CLASSIC,” NOW AVAILABLE IN AN EXPANDED EDITION “This is a book to shake up the world.\u201d \u2014Ann Patchett “Essential reading about our Internet Age.” \u2014New York Times Book Review “A\u00a0book everyone should read.\u201d \u2014American Scientist “I have not only given this book to numerous friends, I actually changed my life in response to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-16","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P4iw66-g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholascarr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholascarr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholascarr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholascarr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholascarr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholascarr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":719,"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholascarr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16\/revisions\/719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nicholascarr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}