Here are three titles you might be interested in. Please note: These titles have not been reviewed by the curator. Please visit your favorite review websites if you want feedback on them. Titles are listed as suggestions only. If you read any of these books and wish to share your review of them, please contact the curator at sleepyheadcentral@gmail.com. ............................................................
Bright Eyed: Insomnia and Its Cultures [paperback, ePub, PDF]by RM Vaughan
Category: Nonfiction, Health, Social Science
Publisher: Coach House Books
Publication Date: June 1, 2015
Pages/Price: 136pp, $14.95 for print edition
ISBN-10: 1770564098
ISBN-13: 9781770564091
From the publisher: "In shutting out shut-eye in favour of productivity, have we created an insomnia culture?
For forty years, RM Vaughan has been fighting, and failing, to get his forty winks each night. He’s not alone, not by any stretch.
More and more studies highlight the health risks of undersleeping, yet we have never been asked to do more, and for longer. And we can’t stop thinking that a lack of sleep is heroic: snoozing is a kind of laziness, after all. But why, when we know more about the value of sleep, are we obsessed with twenty-four-hour workdays and deliberate sleep deprivation?
Working outward from his own experience, Vaughan explores this insomnia culture we’ve created, predicting a cultural collision — will we soon have to legislate rest, as France has done? — and wondering about the cause-and-effect model of our shorter attention spans. Does the fact that we are almost universally underslept change how our world works? We know it’s an issue with, say, pilots and truck drivers, but what about artists — does an insomnia culture change creativity? And what are the long-term cultural consequences of this increasing sacrifice for the ever-elusive goal of ‘total productivity’?"
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Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child [audio download or CD] by Dr. Marc WeissbluthCategory: Nonfiction, Family Health, Self Help
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Publication Date: June 23, 2015
Hours/Price: 16hr 45min, $25.95/free with Audible.com 30-day trial; Audio CD for $12.94
[Download] ASIN: B00E63PEXA
[CD] ISBN-10: 1770564098
[CD] ISBN-13: 9781770564091
From the publisher: "One of the country’s leading researchers updates his revolutionary approach to solving–and preventing–your children’s sleep problems.
Here Dr. Marc Weissbluth, a distinguished pediatrician and father of four, offers his groundbreaking program to ensure the best sleep for your child. In Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child, he explains with authority and reassurance his step-by-step regime for instituting beneficial habits within the framework of your child’s natural sleep cycles. This valuable sourcebook contains brand new research that:
- Pinpoints the way daytime sleep differs from night sleep and why both are important to your child
- Helps you cope with and stop the crybaby syndrome, nightmares, bedwetting, and more
- Analyzes ways to get your baby to fall asleep according to his internal clock–naturally
- Reveals the common mistakes parents make to get their children to sleep–including the inclination to rock and feed
- Explores the different sleep cycle needs for different temperaments–from quiet babies to hyperactive toddlers
- Emphasizes the significance of a nap schedule
Rest is vital to your child’s health growth and development. Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child outlines proven strategies that ensure good, healthy sleep for every age. Advises parents dealing with teenagers and their unique sleep problems."
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Sleepwalker: The Mysterious Makings and Recovery of a Somnambulist [hardcover] by Kathleen Frazier; foreword by Mark MahowaldCategory: Nonfiction, Memoir
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Publication Date: September 8, 2015 - Preorder now
Pages/Price: 240pp, $24.99
ISBN-10: 1634502353
ISBN-13: 978-1634502351
From the publisher: "Every evening, each of us, alone and in the light of our own circumstances, surrenders to sleep—or tries to.
Sleep is nothing if not mysterious. A practice in letting go. A measure of trust.
Growing up the good girl in an Irish American family full of drinkers and terrible sleepers, Kathleen Frazier was twelve when her seemingly innocent sleepwalking turned dangerous. After her brother’s first suicide attempt, Kathleen’s sleepwalking incidents spiraled into a sort of nighttime mirroring of her brother’s waking pain. By day, she was a popular, A+ student, the star of her high school musical. At night, she both longed for and dreaded sleep.
Frazier moved to Manhattan in the 1980s, hoping for a life in the theater. What she got was a run of sleepwalking performances, sometimes with a shocked audience, sometimes solo. Efforts to abate her malady with drinking failed miserably. She became promiscuous looking for nighttime companionship. Could a bed partner save her from flinging herself down a flight of stairs or out an open window? Danger heightened in a city burgeoning with AIDS. Exhaustion stalked her. Through such a dark night of the soul, would she ever find rest, let alone love?
This is the journey Frazier illuminates in her intimate memoir, Sleepwalker. While highlighting her quest to beat her sleep terrors and insomnia, this is ultimately a story of health, hope, and redemption."
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SleepyHeadCENTRAL strongly encourages people with ongoing sleep health problems to approach a medical professional to determine appropriate differential diagnoses and treatment. This post, like all other posts on SHC, is not intended to substitute for medical advice.
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