(Norton, $26)
Blame Thomas Edison for our sleep-deprived lives, said Kate Tuttle in The Boston Globe. As journalist David K. Randall reminds us, current theory holds that until the advent of electric lighting, our ancestors slumbered soundly in two shifts—a so-called “first sleep” beginning not long past sundown, followed by a “second sleep” after an extended period of wakefulness beginning around midnight. Such segmented sleep is indeed so natural that we revert to it in the absence of artificial light. Randall, a sleepwalker, decided to write Dreamland after one of his nocturnal sojourns was cut short by a sharp collision with a wall. In other writers’ hands, the science of insomnia, troubled dreams, and various other sleeping disorders can be “a vaguely dispiriting landscape.” Fortunately, “Randall’s wit and curiosity make him a comforting guide.”
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Randall’s style “sometimes veers toward the glib,” said Maureen Corrigan in NPR.org. Still, Dreamland offers an eye-opening fact on nearly every page. Its passage on the possible links between exposure to artificial light and the higher rates of diseases among night-shift workers proves “as stimulating as a double shot of espresso.” Also fascinating is his tour through the debate over dreams. Leftover Freudians still see them as messages from the unconscious while some pragmatists dismiss them as the waste product of REM sleep. I prefer to embrace the evidence indicating that dreams help us solve problems from our waking lives. Then again, “I’m partial to any research that recommends taking a Dagwood nap in response to life’s dilemmas.”
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”