Piatkus lands 'landmark' book on science of attention

Piatkus has signed a “landmark” book from Dr Amishi Jha on the science of attention and how it shapes our lives.

UK and Commonwealth rights were acquired by non-fiction publisher Zoe Bohm from Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein, on behalf of Idea Architects, with US rights sold to Gideon Weil at HarperOne. Peak Mind: Optimising Your Performance, Productivity and Purpose with the New Science of Attention will be published in 2021.

Jha is associate professor of psychology and director of contemplative neuroscience at University of Miami.

The synopsis states: “In Peak Mind, Jha presents her decades of research on the science of attention and its power to define our lives – what we experience, how we remember those experiences, and what we can achieve – and her discoveries that we are missing 50 per cent of our lives in our failure to manage our attention, and that of all the cognitive training techniques tested in her lab, with everyone from students to soldiers, only mindfulness meditation has been proven to dramatically improve attention and performance and does so in a dose of as little as twelve minutes per day.”

Bohm explained: “Books like Peak Mind don’t come around very often and as soon as I read the material I knew it would be a perfect fit and landmark publication for the Piatkus list. With impeccable credentials and an important, fresh and exciting message to share with readers all over the world, Amishi Jha is everything we look for in an author and I’m looking forward to working with her and the team at HarperOne on this incredibly exciting publication.”

Jha added: “What an honour to be working with Piatkus and Zoe Bohm on this book project! I look forward to offering Peak Mind to UK and Commonwealth readers, an audience known around the globe for their smart , savvy, and infectious curiosity.”