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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No to the bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com.

I'm Michael Silverblad, and welcome to Bookworm.

This is an unusual show because I have an unusual book here.

It's called Attention.

It begins with a short essay on distraction. It ends with a very long essay on attention. And I thought, how are we going to decide whether this book is as funny, as cranky, as 18th century swiftian as I think it is, or is it a bark of information trying to bring the reader into a new digital universe?

So I decided I would have Joshua Cohen's editor, Sam Nicholson. Sam Nicholson, you're an editor at Random House, and this is the third book you've worked on with Josh.

Indeed it is. Third book I've worked on with Josh. Let me just say, too, I was born, raised in Los Angeles and grew up listening to this show. So it's a pleasure to be here.

What are the other books you worked on together?

The first book we worked on together was the novel, Book of Numbers.

The second was a novel called Moving Kings.

And then the third was this book, Attention, which is a collection of nonfiction.

Now, I believed that the book called the Book of Numbers

had to do with the biblical book of numbers, as indeed it did.

I had the feeling that the book, Moving Kings,

had to do with what you do with Kings during an end game in chess,

...