Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish.
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A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. Science writing has a modest audience, medical advice a huge one, and Nicholls offers a pleasing combination readers looking for self-help should consult his excellent bibliography.Ī fine introduction to sleeping: when it works and when it doesn’t.Ī Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence. Besides intense sleepiness, it includes oddball features such as cataplexy (sudden collapse without losing consciousness), sleep paralysis (inability to move when awakening), and vivid hallucinations when falling asleep. He shows particular interest in his own problem, narcolepsy (“a wildly variable spectrum disorder”), an approach that is particularly illuminating. Nicholls writes fluidly about disorders of sleep, including insomnia, nightmares, and sleepwalking, as well as conditions with wildly bizarre features, from hallucinations to terrors to murderous behavior to paralysis. All cultures believe dreams have deep significance, but researchers are skeptical. All mammals dream, human for about two hours every night. Sleepers pass through distinct stages including dreaming, a subject that fascinates scientists no less than laymen. There are many explanations as to why, so no one knows the correct one.
All higher animals sleep it’s essential for life.
Nicholls begins with case histories of bad sleepers, including himself, and what scientists know. The author recounts the history of sleep, describes the latest research, and chronicles his “hundreds of interviews that I have conducted over the last five years with scientists, doctors and others like me who suffer from some kind of dysfunctional sleep,” but he devotes most of the text to sleep pathology. This revelation gave him a personal interest in the science of sleep, which he puts to good use in this lively, accessible overview. A broad investigation of sleep that should prove useful “for everyone who wants to improve their sleep.”įor years, British science writer Nicholls ( The Galápagos: A Natural History, 2014, etc.) suffered miserable daytime drowsiness before doctors made the correct diagnosis: narcolepsy.
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