City of Insomnia is a book about being lost and what you find when you’re lost. Poetry that explores the landscapes of California, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, Infante transforms city streets, love, America’s fractured politics, and his father’s death, unearthing questions about love and loss for which there are no good answers, but near endless emotional terrain to explore.

The roots and effects of insomnia are complex, Eluned Summers-Bremner reveals in this fascinating study, and humans have employed everything from art to science to understand, explain, and mitigate this problem.

Despite its prevalence, insomnia remains poorly understood, mainly because of the lack of clear scientific data supporting the many approaches used. Millions of sufferers turn to alcohol, melatonin or over-the-counter sleep aids, despite the risks and lack of empirical evidence supporting the efficacy or safety of these agents. This book is the first of its kind to collate the up-to-date scientific data in order to identify the gaps in our knowledge and improve clinical management. A highly distinguished team of contributors examines the most recent findings and points where research should be heading. They cover the nature and prevalence of insomnia throughout the lifespan; the molecular, neuropharmacological, and neuroanatomical systems of relevance to insomnia, and the impact of related problems (such as shift work, industrial accidents, mood disorders, and other sleep disorders). This is essential reading for all health care professionals engaged in the management of insomnia.

The first source on insomnia treatment since the advancement of newer drug options and cognitive behavioral therapies, Insomnia: Diagnosis and Treatment presents a comprehensive reference on the complications, evaluation, and treatment of insomnia. Ideal for sleep medicine specialists, psychiatrists, and neurologists, this text uses a multi-discipl

“An insomniac’s ideal sleep aid—and that’s a compliment. With her collage of ruminations about sleeplessness, [Benjamin] promises no real cure . . . Her slim book is what the doctor ordered.”—The Atlantic Insomnia is on the rise. Villainous and unforgiving, it’s the enemy o f energy and focus, the thief of our repose. But can insomnia be an ally, too, a validator of the present moment, of edginess and creativity? Marina Benjamin takes on her personal experience of the condition—her struggles with it, her insomniac highs, and her dawning awareness that states of sleeplessness grant us valuable insights into the workings of our unconscious minds. Although insomnia is rarely entirely welcome, Benjamin treats it less as an affliction than as an encounter that she engages with and plumbs. She adds new dimensions to both our understanding of sleep (and going without it) and of night, and how we perceive darkness. Along the way, Insomnia trips through illuminating material from literature, art, philosophy, psychology, pop culture, and more. Benjamin pays particular attention to the relationship between women and sleep—Penelope up all night, unraveling her day’s weaving for Odysseus; the Pre–Raphaelite artists’ depictions of deeply sleeping women; and the worries that keep contemporary females awake. Insomnia is an intense, lyrical, witty, and humane exploration of a state we too often consider only superficially. “This is the song of insomnia, and I shall sing it,” Marina Benjamin declares.

"Sleep is one of the most important but least understood aspects of our life, wellness, and longevity ... An explosion of scientific discoveries in the last twenty years has shed new light on this fundamental aspect of our lives. Now ... neuroscientist and sleep expert Matthew Walker gives us a new understanding of the vital importance of sleep and dreaming"--Amazon.com.

If ever a book could be called timely, this is it. Sleep disorders medicine has made rapid advances in recent years. The field has attained growing respectability, with a textbook recently published, a congressionally man dated National Commission on Sleep Disorders Research, and a growing public awareness of the importance of sleep disorders. However, this rapid growth has made the discrepancy among certain components of the field all the more obvious. Thus, we find that patients who complain of insom nia are almost never in the majority of those seen in sleep disorders centers, in spite of the well-known fact that the prevalence of such individ uals in our society is by far the largest. Current articles on insomnia abound, but they tend to be facile recitations of diagnosis and impractical global recommendations for treat ment, without providing the essential details. Indeed, the clinical profes sions really do not know what to do about insomnia. This is reflected in a number of observations I have made in the recent past. For example, the majority of individuals who complain of insomnia take alcohol, aspirin, over-the-counter medications, hot baths, and a host of other nostrums, but rarely seek a physician. In the unlikely event that a physician is consulted, he is likely to prescribe a sleep medication but without any particular consistency, or any clear instructions on its use.