I can't work, I can't think, I can't connect with anyone anymore. . . . I mope through a day's work and haven't had a promotion in years. . . . It's like I'm being sucked dry, eaten away, swallowed up, coming unglued. . . . These are voices of a few of the tens of millions who suffer from chronic insomnia. In this revelatory book, Gayle Greene offers a uniquely comprehensive account of this devastating and little-understood condition. She has traveled the world in a quest for answers, interviewing neurologists, sleep researchers, doctors, psychotherapists, and insomniacs of all sorts. What comes of her extraordinary journey is an up-to-date account of what is known about insomnia, providing the information every insomniac needs to know to make intelligent choices among medications and therapies. Insomniac is at once a field guide through the hidden terrain inhabited by insomniacs and a book of consolations for anyone who has struggled with this affliction that has long been trivialized and neglected.
INSOMNIAC (UC Press, Little Brown in the U.K) was Amazon's #1 pick for March 2008 and a finalist for the Gregory Bateson Prize for Cultural Anthropology. There are many books about insomnia, but there are few that describe what the world looks like to people who struggle with this problem on a daily basis. INSOMNIAC combines personal narrative with scientific investigation; it's the first book to report on the widespread discontent of insomniacs who are tired of hearing the same-old advice and being talked down to by professionals. It asks, why has a condition that plagues so many people been so long neglected and trivialized?
Joyce Carol Oates: "Insomniac is an impassioned work--an inspired amalgam of academic and first-hand research, memoir, analysis... a cri de coeur from a lifetime insomniac that is sure to appeal to the vast army of fellow insomniacs the world over."
Billy Collins: "The good news is that Gayle Greene's book is all you ever need to read on the subject of sleeplessness; the bad news for fellow insomniacs is that reading it--even in bed--will fail to lull you to sleep."
Francine Prose: "Insomniac is far too interetsing to lull you into dreamland, but it will certainly engage and comfort you--and keep you company--during those long, dark hours that the clock ticks off until dawn."
Peter Hauri, co-author of No More Sleepless Nights: "This is a very well-researched, in-depth book on insomnia, written with much empathy and from the patient's point of view. I would recommend it to all who are plagued by this malady or who professionally try to teach it."
Richard Lewis, Professor of psychology and neuroscience, Pomona College: "No other work on insomnia provides such a fresh perspective, which is also informative, compelling, and entertaining."
New England Journal of Medicine: "if you want an in-depth overview of the patients, the physicians, and the science that are part of the contemporary culture surrounding insomnia and sleep medicine, Greene's book is the best available."
People Magazine: "In search of a good night's rest, a lit professor travels the world and bones up on sleep science. Fascinating."
I'm the author of THE WOMAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH: ALICE STEWART AND THE SECRETS OF RADIATION, a biography of a little-known British physician and epidemiologist, Alice Stewart, who discovered in the 1950s that if you x-ray pregnant women, you double the risk of a childhood cancer, and who later became guru to the anti-nuclear movement. Her discovery revolutionized medical practice: on account of it, doctors don't do fetal x-rays anymore. I've also published books on Shakespeare and contemporary women writers, and I've written a memoir. In INSOMNIAC, I brought together academic research and first-person narrative to write about the condition that's plagued me all my life. It was enormously therapeutic to write this book, and many readers have written to tell me it's been helpful to them to read it.
I teach at Scripps College in Claremont, California: Shakespeare, women writers, creative nonfiction, and "The Poetry and Science of Sleep."
I have a blog, SLEEPSTARVED.ORG, for insomniacs who are looking for new ways of thinking about insomnia, who want to learn the latest in research, brainstorm about things that help and what might be done to bring this hidden malady to public awareness.
