William C. Dement (1928–2020)

I loved this easy to read, comprehensive, entertaining book. Dement sets out to do one thing: educate readers about a neglected field: the sleeping mind. With a lot of pizzazz and humour, he tackles such subjects as REM sleep, circadian rhythms, dreams and sleep pathologies. He pulls from personal anecdotes and breakthrough research to entertain and educate - a great balance that leaves the reader knowledgeable on the basics of sleep. The last chapter was more of rant on the obstacles of show more research - I could have done without it, but it did provide some comical situations.
All in all a great introduction to sleep and its curious manifestations. show less

This book is a passionate and well-argumented plea to pay more attention to the undervalued part of our lives that is sleep. It explains a lot about what sleep is, what can disturb it and what the consequences can be. It also has a section on how to improve your own sleep, but it definitely is not a self-help book.

With a stricter editor I might have given this the full five stars. There are some parts where he goes off on things that are not strictly his expertise, such as the biomedics of show more stimulants, and his humor can be slightly stale.

All the same, I strongly recommend this book. It will teach you a thing or two, and it might actually change your life. show less

Interesting account of the results of sleep research by one of the founders of this discipline, with personal anecdotes and guidelines for discovering your own sleep debt and developing healthy sleep patterns. The reason for rating this as 4 stars is the age of the book, so that the contents are not current. But it is still valid including the repeated warning never to drive drowsy.

the quality and quantity of information contained here is incredible, and well-communicated too. but its organization is clumsy and makes it difficult to use/reference/navigate, and it can often be too long-winded