Reconnected How 7 screen-free weeks with monks and Amish farmers helped me recover the lost art of being human

Bestseller Whittaker (Get Your Hopes Up) shares an enlightening account of how a seven-week break from his phone and other digital devices changed his life. Sobered by a notification that he spent an average of seven hours and 23 minutes a day on his phone, the author stayed at a monastery in the California desert and an Amish farm in Ohio in hopes that the quiet and simplicity on offer there would "reset" his body and mind. He learned to savor the little things, like the flavor of coffee; to commune more freely with God; and to rediscover the joys of a spontaneous, non-efficiency-based lifestyle (of driving sans GPS, he writes, "what if by getting lost on the way to work... you run across a beautiful view or an under-the-radar park? You'll never know unless you try"). More broadly, he perceptively identifies the market-based machinations underlying the internet's outrage-provoking content ("Most of the well-produced content out there that makes your blood boil is literally making money off your blood boiling"). It's a thought-provoking examination of the challenges of online connection--and the benefits of breaking free once in a while. (Sept.)