Counting Sheep

A brilliant overview of that most vital, most underrated and most elusive of human activities, sleep.

Using the approach and skills he deployed to such successful effect on the relationship between mind and body in the prize-winning ‘The Sickening Mind’, likeable British popular science author Paul Martin here tackles the science of that most mysterious, elusive and alluring of human activities, sleeping, and draws on both cutting-edge neuroscience and classic literature to do so.

We spend one third of our lives asleep, but know hardly anything about it, and can remember so little of it as we come out of it. Why?

Are dreams the place we go to resolve our problems, emasculate our fears and rehearse our hopes? Why are we paralysed when we dream? Why did sleep evolve?

And is anybody getting enough sleep?

About the author

Paul Martin studied biology at Cambridge, acquiring a First in Natural Sciences and a PhD in behavioural biology. He went to Stanford as a Harkness Fellow and then to the School of Medicine as Postdoctoral Fellow, before lecturing and researching at Cambridge University. He is the co-author with Pat Bateson of Measuring Behaviour and Design for a Life. His first solo book was The Sickening Mind, which was shortlisted for the NCR Prize in 1997.