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In June 2015 Johann Hari told a TED audience that “the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection.” The talk went viral, and his TED talks have since been viewed more than 70 million times. Four years earlier his newspaper career had collapsed: in 2011 The Independent suspended him after he admitted passing off quotes from other sources as things said to him, and he handed back his Orwell Prize. Since then the Glasgow-born journalist has written four long investigations, into drug policy, depression, attention and the new weight-loss drugs, each starting from his own life and widening to interviews with researchers in several countries. This guide covers his five key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 5 key books · 2002–2024 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Johann Hari has written five books: God Save the Queen? (2002), Chasing the Scream (2015), Lost Connections (2018), Stolen Focus (2022) and Magic Pill (2024). Start with Chasing the Scream, his history of the war on drugs, which became the film The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021). Read on for what each book argues, and the criticism his methods have drawn.
Where to Start with Johann Hari
If you want the book that made his name
→ Chasing the Scream (2015) — addiction, drug policy and Billie Holiday.
If you want to understand depression and anxiety
→ Lost Connections (2018) — the social causes behind them.
If you find it hard to concentrate
→ Stolen Focus (2022) — the twelve forces he blames for it.
If you want to know about Ozempic
→ Magic Pill (2024) — written while taking it himself.
5 Johann Hari Books, in Order
God Save the Queen?
A short book, 160 pages, published by Icon Books in June 2002, the year of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. Hari argues that the British monarchy no longer fits the 21st century and should come to an end, working through the Windsors from the Queen Mother to the young princes. He was 23 and had graduated from Cambridge the year before.
Chasing the Scream
Published in January 2015, a century after the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, it tells the history of the war on drugs through Harry Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the singer Billie Holiday and the gangster Arnold Rothstein. Hari says he spent three years on it and travelled to nine countries, including Portugal, Switzerland and Uruguay; Bruce Alexander’s “Rat Park” experiments are central to its case that drugs alone do not cause addiction. Later UK editions are subtitled The Search for the Truth About Addiction. It was partly the basis for Lee Daniels’s film The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021).
Lost Connections
Hari had taken antidepressants since he was 18. Here he questions the chemical-imbalance explanation of depression and sets out nine causes, mostly social, from loneliness and meaningless work to what he calls “junk values”, followed by seven ways to reconnect. His examples include tenants in Berlin who protested for a year against rent rises, a London clinic that prescribes community work, and a Baltimore bicycle shop run without bosses. Later UK editions are subtitled Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope.
Stolen Focus
Hari spent three months without his phone in Provincetown, Massachusetts, using a flip phone and a paper map, then went to interview researchers on attention. He names twelve deep causes of the crisis, from exhaustion and multitasking to platforms built to maximise screen time, and argues for system-level change, an “attention rebellion”, rather than personal willpower. It entered The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list at number seven in February 2022; the psychologist Stuart Ritchie was among those who pointed out that there is little evidence our ability to focus has actually declined.
Magic Pill
In January 2023 Hari began injecting himself weekly with Ozempic. The book follows his own experience and his reporting from Iceland, Minneapolis and Tokyo: how the food system changed after the 1970s, why Japan is the only wealthy country without an obesity crisis, and twelve potential risks of the drugs. Reviews were mixed: Tom Chivers in The Guardian found misused references, and Hari apologised to the critic Jay Rayner for wrongly writing that he had taken one of the drugs.
In What Order to Read Johann Hari
The four big books stand alone, so you can read them in any order and by subject. They share a structure: Hari begins with his own problem, travels to meet researchers and people trying something different, and ends with a list of causes and proposed changes that go beyond the individual.
Reading them in publication order shows the method developing, from the history and portraits of Chasing the Scream to the more personal, science-heavy later books. God Save the Queen? is a short early polemic, unrelated to the rest and mainly of interest if you want everything he has written.
A reading path
1. Chasing the Scream (2015)
2. Lost Connections (2018)
3. Stolen Focus (2022)
4. Magic Pill (2024)
The years · 1979–2024
Quick facts about Johann Hari
- Known for
- Johann Hari is known for best-selling investigations into addiction, depression and attention that argue the causes lie more in how we live than in individual brains, and for the 2011 scandal that ended his newspaper career.
- 1979
- Born in Glasgow; raised in London
- 2001
- Double first from King’s College, Cambridge
- 2008
- Orwell Prize, returned in 2011
- 2024
- Magic Pill
- Born
- 21 January 1979, Glasgow, to a Scottish mother and a Swiss father; raised in London
- Education
- King’s College, Cambridge: double first in social and political sciences, 2001
- Worked
- New Statesman, 2001–2003, then columnist at The Independent until 2012
- Honours
- Amnesty International Media Awards (2007, 2010) and the Martha Gellhorn Prize (2010); his 2008 Orwell Prize was withdrawn and returned
- Film
- The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021), partly based on Chasing the Scream
- Talks
- His TED talks have been viewed more than 70 million times
The red mark is 2015: Chasing the Scream, his history of the war on drugs.
How Johann Hari Writes: From His Own Life to the Wider System
Each of the later books starts with Hari himself. Lost Connections opens with the antidepressants he took from the age of 18, Stolen Focus with three months away from his phone in Provincetown, and Magic Pill with his first Ozempic injection in January 2023. From there he widens out to interviews with scientists, doctors and people affected, across several countries.
He writes in scenes and portraits, Billie Holiday and Harry Anslinger, the Berlin tenants, the rats of Rat Park, and organises each argument as a numbered list: nine causes of depression and seven ways to reconnect, twelve causes of the attention crisis, twelve risks of the weight-loss drugs. The direction is always the same, away from individual blame and towards social and political change.
Because of the 2011 scandal, his method is closely watched. For Chasing the Scream he put audio of more than 400 interview quotes online, with a corrections page, and he made recordings and notes available for Lost Connections. Scientists and reviewers, among them Seth Mnookin in The New York Times and Tom Chivers in The Guardian, have argued that he simplifies or misreads parts of the research he cites.
Watch
Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong
Hari’s 2015 TED talk on what he learned researching Chasing the Scream, including Bruce Alexander’s Rat Park experiments.
Frequently asked questions about Johann Hari’s books
How many books has Johann Hari written?
Five: God Save the Queen? (2002), Chasing the Scream (2015), Lost Connections (2018), Stolen Focus (2022) and Magic Pill (2024). The last four are his long investigations; the first is a short polemic about the monarchy.
What are Johann Hari’s books in order?
God Save the Queen? (2002), Chasing the Scream (2015), Lost Connections (2018), Stolen Focus (2022) and Magic Pill (2024). Each stands alone, so there is no reading order you have to follow.
Where should I start with Johann Hari?
Chasing the Scream, his history of the war on drugs told through people such as Billie Holiday and Harry Anslinger. If depression or concentration is what brings you to him, start with Lost Connections or Stolen Focus instead.
What is Johann Hari’s most famous book?
Chasing the Scream (2015), known through his 2015 TED talk on addiction and the film The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021). Stolen Focus (2022) entered The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list at number seven.
Was Chasing the Scream made into a film?
Partly. The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021), directed by Lee Daniels from a screenplay by Suzan-Lori Parks, is partly based on it. Andra Day won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama for playing Holiday and was nominated for the Academy Award. It was released in the US on Hulu in February 2021.
What was the Johann Hari plagiarism scandal?
In June 2011 bloggers and the journalist Brian Whelan showed that Hari had presented quotes from his subjects’ books and earlier interviews as if they had been said to him. The Independent suspended him for two months; he returned his 2008 Orwell Prize and left the paper in January 2012. In September 2011 he also admitted editing Wikipedia under a false name to attack journalists he had clashed with, and apologised. His later books have drawn criticism too, for altered quotes in Chasing the Scream and errors in Magic Pill, some of which he said would be corrected in later editions.
Where does “the opposite of addiction is connection” come from?
From Hari’s TED talk “Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong” (June 2015), which drew on the research in Chasing the Scream, including Bruce Alexander’s Rat Park experiments.
Did Johann Hari take Ozempic?
Yes. He began weekly Ozempic injections in January 2023, and Magic Pill (2024) combines his own experience with reporting on the benefits and risks of the new weight-loss drugs.
Where did Johann Hari go without his phone?
To Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he spent three months with a flip phone without internet access and a paper map. The experiment opens Stolen Focus (2022).
Where is Johann Hari from?
He was born in Glasgow on 21 January 1979 to a Scottish mother and a Swiss father, holds British and Swiss citizenship, and grew up in London.
Footnotes
- Johann Hari — Wikipedia
- Chasing the Scream — Wikipedia
- Stolen Focus — Wikipedia
- The United States vs. Billie Holiday — Wikipedia
- Johann Hari and depression — New Statesman, 2018
- Magic Pill — Penguin Random House
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection.”
— Johann Hari, “Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong”, TED talk (2015)
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