Wild Nights: How Taming Sleep Created Our Restless World
by Benjamin Reiss /
2017 / English / EPUB
2.6 MB Download
Why the modern world forgot how to sleep
Why the modern world forgot how to sleep
Why is sleep frustrating for so many people? Why do we spend so
much time and money managing and medicating it, and training
ourselves and our children to do it correctly? In
Why is sleep frustrating for so many people? Why do we spend so
much time and money managing and medicating it, and training
ourselves and our children to do it correctly? InWild
Nights
Wild
Nights, Benjamin Reiss finds answers in sleep's hidden
history--one that leads to our present, sleep-obsessed society,
its tacitly accepted rules, and their troubling consequences.
, Benjamin Reiss finds answers in sleep's hidden
history--one that leads to our present, sleep-obsessed society,
its tacitly accepted rules, and their troubling consequences.
Today we define a good night's sleep very narrowly: eight hours
in one shot, sealed off in private bedrooms, children apart
from parents. But for most of human history, practically no one
slept this way. Tracing sleep's transformation since the dawn
of the industrial age, Reiss weaves together insights from
literature, social and medical history, and cutting-edge
science to show how and why we have tried and failed to tame
sleep. In lyrical prose, he leads readers from bedrooms and
laboratories to factories and battlefields to Henry David
Thoreau's famous cabin at Walden Pond, telling the stories of
troubled sleepers, hibernating peasants, sleepwalking
preachers, cave-dwelling sleep researchers, slaves who led
nighttime uprisings, rebellious workers, spectacularly frazzled
parents, and utopian dreamers. We are hardly the first people,
Reiss makes clear, to chafe against our modern rules for
sleeping.
Today we define a good night's sleep very narrowly: eight hours
in one shot, sealed off in private bedrooms, children apart
from parents. But for most of human history, practically no one
slept this way. Tracing sleep's transformation since the dawn
of the industrial age, Reiss weaves together insights from
literature, social and medical history, and cutting-edge
science to show how and why we have tried and failed to tame
sleep. In lyrical prose, he leads readers from bedrooms and
laboratories to factories and battlefields to Henry David
Thoreau's famous cabin at Walden Pond, telling the stories of
troubled sleepers, hibernating peasants, sleepwalking
preachers, cave-dwelling sleep researchers, slaves who led
nighttime uprisings, rebellious workers, spectacularly frazzled
parents, and utopian dreamers. We are hardly the first people,
Reiss makes clear, to chafe against our modern rules for
sleeping.
A stirring testament to sleep's diversity,
A stirring testament to sleep's diversity,Wild Nights
Wild Nights
offers a profound reminder that in the vulnerability of slumber
we can find our shared humanity. By peeling back the covers of
history, Reiss recaptures sleep's mystery and grandeur and
offers hope to weary readers: as sleep was transformed once
before, so too can it change today.
offers a profound reminder that in the vulnerability of slumber
we can find our shared humanity. By peeling back the covers of
history, Reiss recaptures sleep's mystery and grandeur and
offers hope to weary readers: as sleep was transformed once
before, so too can it change today.