Sleep Thieves » (Reprint)

Stanley Coren, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, is a recognized expert on dog-human interaction who has appeared on Dateline; The Oprah Winfrey Show; Good Morning, America; 20/20; Larry King Live; and many other TV and radio programs. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with a beagle, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel, and a Nova Scotia duck-tolling retriever, as well as his wife and her cat.

In this engrossing, expansive look at the facts and folklore of sleep, best-selling author Stanley Coren provides astounding new evidence that we are becoming an increasingly sleep-deprived society, and that this condition is seriously affecting our work, posing a danger to ourselves and others. He shows, for example, that the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the disaster involving the space shuttle Challenger, and the nuclear accidents at both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were all associated with people suffering from sleep deprivation. Drawing on dramatic interviews with a range of professionals including doctors, airline pilots, stockbrokers, and truck drivers, Coren shows the risks that everyone now faces as more and more people in the workforce operate with insufficient sleep. He also looks at some of the more subtle and insidious effects of sleep loss on our physical and mental health and explains how to tell whether you are getting enough sleep. In addition Coren asks intriguing questions like: Do fish sleep? Are there really "morning" people and "night" people? Why is it virtually impossible to fall asleep during midmorning hours no matter how tired you are? And how is it that you can sleep for hours on a plane and never feel rested? Some provocative stories about sleep oddities are presented along with a description of some strange sleep disorders that affect a surprisingly large number of people. Finally, the book describes specific techniques to help children sleep through the night and to improve the quality and efficiency of your own sleep.

Library Journal

While Coren's (psychology, Univ. of British Columbia) main thesis is that we Americans are becoming an ever-more-exhausted and accident-prone society due to "sleep debt," his fascinating book is also an in-depth look at this mysterious activity in which we all must, by nature, engage. Coren, author of the best-selling The Intelligence of Dogs (LJ 3/15/94), sees much peril in the fact that we are sleeping less, sleeping oddly, and think we can get away with it. He takes the reader on a journey into the world of sleep, keeping the scientific jargon to a manageable minimum without sacrificing the integrity of his work. One is impressed with the facts he lays out, though he makes clear that sleep remains a necessary but still very mysterious realm of human experience. After taking us through chapters detailing what scientists have come to know about sleep and the sleep experience, he tackles sleep problems, including insomnia, and details with alarming anecdotal and statistical evidence what progressively less sleep is buying us, both as individuals and as a society. Many chapters also offer tips, hints, and questionnaires dealing with different aspects of sleep. This is a well-written, easy-to-understand book on a complex scientific subject to which everyone can relate. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries.-David M. Turkalo, Suffolk Univ. Law Sch. Lib., Boston