Shawn Stevenson

There are some great tips and examples to help create better sleep habits in this book. I like that each section was well written and backed with data on why it would be beneficial. As a night shifter constantly having to readjust my sleep though, some parts were more helpful than others. I appreciate the small section on shift work but it really just listed the negative and detrimental effect of shift work without many suggestions to help. I would love to see a book that can help suggest the best way for a shift worker to adapt their habits to help. I understand it's an unnatural way to live and sleep, but unfortunately some professions require this and we need to find a way to help shift workers stay healthy and alert despite the sleep schedule they may have to follow… (mais)

The lack of footnotes in this book is troubling to me. It makes a lot of big claims and the references aren't directly connected to them. If I see a phrase like "studies have shown", I want to know exactly what study and be able to access it immediately. I don't want to have to go through every reference in the bibliography and cross-check it against every claim in the book. A few of the things here sound really pseudoscientific to me (like the EMF section) and the substandard way the sources are organized is a HUGE red flag to me.

The writing is fine, and some of the tips are clearly practical. My low rating is based on the points I discussed above.… (mais)

This book is an extremely helpful combination of science and common sense. If you're looking for practical, highly actionable advice on how to sleep better, read this book now. Making just one of the changes the author suggests (going screen free at least an hour and a half before bedtime) made an immediately noticeable difference in the quality and quantity of my sleep the first night I put it into practice. The same was true for the next thing I put into practice, cutting off caffeine intake by 2:00 pm. This from a person who has had problems with insomnia and sleep quality for her entire life. (Ask my mom- I was That Baby.)

I'm not 100% in sync with all of the suggestions made in this book and I know that some might be offended by the frequent references to evolution. But I highly recommend that you read the book and ignore the bits you don't care for; there's enough solid information in it to make it worth your time.

On a side note, I don't understand the complaints about the author referring to scientific studies without giving specifics; he referenced at least three dozen studies, papers, and published articles by name and that was my very casual count while reading over several days. Don't go into a book like this looking for the same writing style you'd find in The New England Journal of Medicine and then leave a bad review because you didn't get what you were looking for.… (mais)