It’s no wonder sleep is a problem for millions of Americans. We’re overweight, lead sedentary lives, spend evenings bathed in artificial light and share beds with other people, all of which impede shuteye. The massive baby-boomer generation is aging, and humans probably evolved to sleep more lightly as we get older. Such are the reasons an astonishing one in four U.S. adults has prescription sleeping pills in the medicine chest, even though studies show that “drugs like Ambien and Lunesta offer no significant improvement” in the quality or quantity of sleep.
We learn all this from David K. Randall’s “Dreamland,” a modest yet informative work of nonfiction in which a sleepwalker walks us through the subject of sleep. Randall has done a lot of good reporting, writes clearly and makes even the scientific aspects of his subject easily accessible. And he knows what makes lively reading, such as the legal conundrum of people who kill while sleepwalking.
Regrettably, he also seems to feel that every aspect of the topic needs to be embodied in somebody’s story. Much of the chapter on snoring, for example, is spent discussing the progenitors of a device for countering sleep apnea. The science of sleep is covered painlessly but a little sparingly. Nor does the author dwell much on sleep in literature and mythology. The result is an enjoyable, edifying book that goes down easy, even if it leaves you wishing that it were a tad more ambitious.
The one thing “Dreamland” will not do — sorry, insomniacs — is put you to sleep. The topic and the treatment are both too interesting. Take dreams, for instance. Randall reports that Freud was all wrong; science shows that rather than brimming with hidden meanings and sexual longings, dreams are straightforward, even pedestrian, if usually unpleasant — rehearsals, perhaps, for bad things we might face while awake.
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