The Sleep Revolution

March 7, 2016
Prompted by a frightening personal experience with exhaustion, Huffington Post founder Huffington (Thrive) synthesizes a vast array of sleep research and provides tips on maximizing sleep time in an increasingly deprived global culture. Noting that this deprivation is often “glamorized and celebrated” among go-getters, Huffington cites figures indicating that sleep-deprived people are less productive at work. She also lists health risks, including heart attack, stroke, diabetes, and obesity, as well as cognitive impairment on par with alcohol consumption. Huffington goes on to explore the history of sleep, from the ancient world to the Industrial Revolution, when sleep began to suffer. For science, she discusses circadian rhythms, sleep stages, and sleep disorders and their treatments. Tips on achieving better sleep habits are presented for different age groups, with parents encouraged to rethink how they approach putting their children to bed, and students to place more emphasis on sleep for a higher GPA. Much advice is familiar—put aside the electronic devices, exercise more, and meditate—but some is less so, including suggestions on how to use the latest sleep-tracking devices and sleep-optimizing hotels. Huffington proves herself a powerful advocate for those suffering from what she identifies as the current “sleep crisis.” Agent: Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, WME.

September 30, 2013
Nash delivers here a no-holds-barred, fiercely honest chronicle of the glories, excesses, disappointments, and joys of the rock-and-roll life. In the evocative and haunting style of his best songs (“Carrie Anne,” “Teach Your Children,” “Our House,” “Chicago”), Nash tells of his childhood in the rough-and-tumble north of England; his developing love of music and the formation, with Allan Clarke, of his first band, the Fourtones, who eventually became the Hollies; his introduction, through Cass Elliott, to David Crosby; his relationships with Joni Mitchell and Rita Coolidge; and his tumultuous relationship with group Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Even with Stills’s and Young’s virtuoso guitars and Crosby, Nash, and Stills’s genius for weaving harmonies around each other and flying into soaring musical flights, the group was anything but harmonious, and Nash doesn’t hold back in his descriptions of the titanic struggles between Stills’ and Young. After all these years, Nash says that he never tires of the unique sound that CSN makes: “It’s like the pull of gravity to the center of the earth; when I sing with those two, it keeps my world in balance.” Nash’s love of songwriting is undiminished, and lyrics and music continue to flow through his pen. Nash’s tour-de-force tale reveals a soul who is “a complete slave to the muse of music. Agent, Jillian Manus, Manus & Assoc.

April 1, 2016
After Huffington (Thrive, 2014), cofounder and editor in chief of The Huffington Post, collapsed from exhaustion, hitting her face on her desk, breaking her cheekbone, and regaining consciousness in a pool of blood, she became a self-described sleep evangelist. She seems to genuinely want to save others from her fate in this persuasive treatise. Noting that it's our collective delusion that overwork and burnout are the price we must pay in order to succeed, she asserts that it's not worth it. Sleep deprivation, she says, is linked with increased risks of diabetes, heart attack, stroke, cancer, obesity, and Alzheimer's disease. Among the many topics she covers are the sleep crisis (40 percent of Americans get less than the recommended seven hours), the sleep industry (pills), sleep history (the ancient Greeks and Egyptians often spent the night in sleep temples ), jet lag, sleep innovations, and sleep tips. She name-dropsafter all, she is Arianna Huffington: Jennifer Aniston's manager tells her that she, too, collapsed from exhaustion. So compelling and informative is Huffington's book that everyone should read it and sleep!(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

March 15, 2016
A book about sleep deprivation from an author well-versed on the subject. Co-founder and president of the influential, eponymous news blog, Huffington (Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder, 2014, etc.) ranks 52nd on Forbes' list of the most powerful women in the world. She describes her own experience in 2007, when she suffered a burnout and collapsed at her desk. Regaining consciousness, she awoke with an injured cheekbone and her head in a pool of blood. At that time, she slept, at most, four hours each night. Huffington's situation as a celebrity and mother of two daughters was not dissimilar to that of other successful people today. She estimates that nearly half of American adults are sleep-deprived, and the situation is worse for college students. Our values have become so skewed that all-nighters have become a mark of success. For those looking to get ahead in their careers and others who need to hold two jobs to make ends meet, going without sleep has become the norm. As the author documents, this abuse of our bodies is devastating not only to our health and longevity; job performance and relationships also suffer. Indeed, it is not unusual for drivers to nod off at the wheel. Huffington also looks at the flip side of habitual insomnia. She relates instances where reliance on sleep medications, such as Ambien, has induced potentially dangerous behavior--e.g. sleepwalking, and even driving, in a dazed state. Her takeaway message is that we should prioritize sleeping seven to eight hours every day. With little new insight to add on this well-worked theme, however, the author relies on inspirational nostrums and a host of tired cliches--e.g., "We are not defined by our jobs and our titles...sleep gives us a chance to refocus on the essence of who we are." Readers looking for effective advice for sleep should turn to a professional. A disappointing addition to the celebrity self-help shelf.

COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.