Power Sleep : The Revolutionary Program That Prepares Your Mind for Peak Performance (Paperback)

by James B. Maas (Author), Megan L. Wherry (Contributor), David J. Axelrod (Author), Barbara R. Hogan (Contributor), Jennifer Bloomin (Contributor) "Ask this question and you'll hear some interesting answers..." (more)
Key Phrases: balanced diet yesterday, sleep bank account, homeostatic sleep drive, William Dement, New York, Multiple Sleep Latency Test (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Where you start reading this book will probably say a lot about your current station in life. New parents will probably skip right to chapter 12 and the section subtitled "Tips for Exhausted Parents of Newborns, Infants, and Children." Drowsy office workers might go for chapter 9, which explores the subject of midday naps (which may reduce stress and the risk of heart disease). Other chapters look at traveling (driving, jet lag), shift work, and insomnia and other sleep disorders. Dr. James Maas has spent 34 years lecturing to drowsy psychology undergraduates at Cornell University, and knows how to hold an audience--even when the subject is sleep, and even when the conclusion is that most of us don't get enough of it. This is a fascinating book; you'll want to take it in slowly and then sleep on it. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
Why you need a good night's sleep.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks; 1st edition (December 9, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060977604
• ISBN-13: 978-0060977603
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #27,254 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #15 in	Books > Health, Mind & Body > Aging > Sleep Disorders
  #82 in	Books > Health, Mind & Body > Self-Help > Stress Management

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a good overview on the importance of sleep, December 4, 2001

By	M. H. Bayliss "book queen" - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I don't think it will shock many readers that Americans are at least one or two hours sleep deprived a night -- the author details dozens of horrifying accidents and incidents that resulted from the actions of sleep deprived individuals. The opening few chapters about the various levels of sleep made for great reading. The twenty tips for good sleep were helpful, although most of them I already knew. In short, there is nothing extremely new or cutting edge, but there is lots of usable and easy to read information about all kinds of sleep disorders. I found it very entertaining and well presented although I would have cut out some of the extra stuff.

53 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Useful, May 6, 2002

By	ptitchitza (Leiden, Netherlands) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Power Sleep : The Revolutionary Program That Prepares Your Mind for Peak Performance (Hardcover)

Not having problems with sleeping and appreciating it's importance, this book is not really for me: it soon becomes very clear that the author's two basic thesis for writing this book are 1) that you are so consumed by hectic pace of everyday life that you almost consider sleeping a waste of time, and 2) that you hardly have any idea on how detrimental is such an attitude to you, your energy, mood and success, and the people around you.

Even if you did start reading the book, Dr. Maas is concerned that you aren't truly interested and that you might drop it any moment. One has to appreciate his attempts in keeping your interest by writing short chapters with small units, many illustrations (photographs or cartoons), his own attempts in writing wittily (with mixed results), and plenty of repetitions of most important points. I thought that a good part of what is written is common knowledge. On the other hand, there are things that I hoped would be explained which aren't even mentioned. For example, what are the biological mechanisms (and how they work) that affect some peoples' need for sleep when it's full moon, what are the hormonal changes that occur when a very fatigued individual after skipping a night or two feels his/her sex drive has increased rather than decreased (which would be expected)... you will not find anything on such phenomena in the book. The impact of sleep deprivation on one's mood and emotions is mentioned but not really explained.

There are two things that I consider particularly good: a short true-or-false test with popular notions about sleep which one can complete in about 5 minutes, and which can be very motivational, and the Peak Performance Sleep Log which a reader is supposed to keep during several weeks. It's a simple record of factors that affect your sleep and even though one can occasionally feel silly keeping the log, it helped in finding a pattern where previously I did not think there was one. I believe Dr. Maas' claim that after a few weeks people may "discover, perhaps for the first time, what it really feels like to be fully alert all day long." As he says "If you're getting less than eight hours of sleep each night, including weekends, or if you fall asleep instantly, or need an alarm clock to wake up, consider yourself one of millions of chronically sleep-deprived people - perhaps blissfully ignorant of how sleepy and ineffective you are, or how dynamic you could be with adequate sleep."

To conclude: if I have felt mislead into buying this book it's more because of the way publisher presented it than it is about the book's claim: the author makes it perfectly clear who is his target readership. As other reviewers have noted, there isn't much "revolutionary" about this book. Nevertheless, I did find it useful and consider it a good introduction to the topic. In addition, it contains numerous references, including web-sites, addresses of sleep disorder centers in the USA etc. which one can follow.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a waste of money but not what I expected, July 10, 2004

By	M. D West "Future English Teacher" (Avon, Connecticut) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I liked this book in a lot of ways, but when it ended, I was dissappointed. There is worthwhile information about sleep and interesting quotations from famous people about sleep but there seemed to be a lot of filler in this book. The book throws out many statistics but rarely explains how these stastics were obtained. I also thought the book contained too many horror stories about deaths related to people falling asleep while operating heavy machinery etc.,.
I got this book because I am 19 years old and in college and basically ever since I turned 13 I haven't been able to maintain a normal sleep cycle for more than a week at a time. I always end up not being able to get to sleep at my set bedtime and throw off my whole plan to wake and rise at the same time everyday. Unfortunately, I don't think this book is going to help me change that. I only just finished it today, though, so I'll keep you updated as to how things go.
The books' main suggestion is that you should wake up at the same time every day and go to sleep at the same time every night. This is pretty common knowledge and unfortunately I just don't think this is something I can realistically do because I have tried hundreds of time in the past and just not been able to maintain a consistent schedule.
The book gives some valuable suggestions like "don't exercise near bedtime" and "don't eat any heavy meals before bedtime". The book describes the "architecture" of sleep which is interesting to read about and gave me a better understanding of my sleeping patterns. One valuable piece of information the book gave is that 8 hours of disrupted sleep is not as restorative as 6 hours of deep uninterrupted sleep. The book also suggest that if you are cramming for an exam late at night that you should get a minimum of four hours of sleep. This is a valuable piece of information which I could have used throughout the last year of college. The message about sleeping pills in this book is that you shouldn't take them. I think one good message that the book delivers is that sleep is more valuable than we think. The book says that, when we get more sleep, we function at a higher level and then throws out some sketchy statistics to support this argument.
There is a list of sleep clinics in the back of the book which is great. I think I'll have to check one of them out because I doubt this book's suggestions are going to solve my sleeping problems.
I was very disappointed by the fact that there was no concluding chapter to the book. The book doesn't tie everything together at the end and just ends with a list of suggestions for elderly people on how to get to sleep and 20 pages of appendixes and footnotes. I also felt mislead by the title of this book. I thought the book would include information about how to sleep less or how to get more restorative sleep but it didn't and I found that most of the information presented is stuff I already knew. You could probably find most of this information on the internet but I only paid $1 for the book and it did have some interesting information (although it didn't provide me with the type of information I was expecting) so it gets 3 stars.

p.s. I also found the suggestions to "go to sleep now if you're tired and staying up and reading this book" really annoying haha