【 MAPPING THE DARKNESS 】

As someone with idiopathic hypersomnia, this book addresses something that is close to my heart.

Genre: Non-Fiction, Health Science [sleep]
Author: Kenneth Miller
Published: October 2023
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Pages: 352 [hardback]

I’ve been on a mission to read more about sleep science, its history and what knowledge is out there. This was a very interesting read for ticking all of those boxes.

Unlike your normal health science book, this isn’t so much a how-to or a to-do list of things to learn or follow to improve your quality of life, but rather it’s an extremely informative and comprehensive history of sleep science, filled with many take-away nuggets of information that will help you piece together the bigger puzzle of what is going on.

I really enjoyed reading this book, especially as it can often feel like there isn’t much out there on this topic. I thought the author did a brilliant job writing this and putting it together in an incredibly natural way that married history, memoir and facts seamlessly. The book progressively moves through a timeline that begins with the ‘birth’ of sleep science, up until the modern era, focussing on key sleep scientists throughout history and how they significantly furthered/contributed to the field.

In short, I highly recommend this to all people interested in sleep. It really brings into focus how sleep deprived on the whole people are because of the rhythms of modern society, and then further highlights how much worse this impacts people with sleep disorders – ranging from sleep apnoea to narcolepsy and everything in between.

For me, this has made me rethink just how seriously I should and can take sleep, and how to prioritise it in my life. It’s a comfort sort of book, to read about people so passionate about helping those struggling with a sleep disorder – it helps you to feel less alone! It’s certainly a great complement to any other therapies you might be following to bolster your general knowledge of terminology, methods and motivations.

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Title: Mapping the Darkness
Author: Kenneth Miller
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Thirty-two days underground. No heat. No sunlight.

4 June 1938. Nathaniel Kleitman and his research student make their way down the seventy-one steps leading to the mouth of Mammoth Cave. They are about to embark on one of the most intrepid and bizarre experiments in medical history, one which will change our understanding of sleep forever. Undisturbed by natural light, they will investigate what happens when you overturn one of the fundamental rhythms of the human body. Together, they enter the darkness.

When Kleitman first arrived in New York, a penniless twenty-year-old refugee, few would have guessed that in just a few decades he would revolutionise the field of sleep science. In Mapping the Darkness, Kenneth Miller weaves science and history to tell the story of the outsider scientists who took sleep science from the fringes to a mainstream obsession. Reliving the spectacular experiments, technological innovation, imaginative leaps and single-minded commitment of these early pioneers, Miller provides a tantalising glimpse into the most mysterious third of our lives.