I am a student in Professor Maas's Psych 101 course at Cornell University. Power Sleep is required for the course (Professor Maas does not make a profit on sales to Cornell students). I found this book extremely helpful. Though I've always thought that I was knowledgeable about the subtleties of sleep, I found that I was not upon reading this book. I've been plagued with illness and found myself sluggish for years. I was always forced out of bed after 8 hours by my mother, concerned that I get enough out of each day. Little did I know that I was trying to thrive at a huge sleep deficit. Since following Professor Maas's Power Sleep advice, my grades have improved in addition to my ability to think clearly throughout the day. I would recommend this book to anyone who has any type of sleeping problems, or even those who think that they are performing at their peaks!

I picked up this book in a used bookstore, again instinctively, after having read Veronique's The Art of Doing Nothing & William Anthony's The Art of Napping. Although the book does not offer really cutting-edge stuff, I find it fascinating, as it offers some useful advice for the peak performer.

The subject of optimum performance technologies always intrigue me. Imagine we spend a third of our lives on sleeping. So naturally I want to find out how to do it better so that I can stay awake longer.

Despite the author's tendency for mundane rambling throughout the book, I find the chapters explaining the golden rules of sleep & introducing the twenty great sleep strategies are the most interesting.

I recommend this book, as complementary reading to the books mentioned at the beginning of this review. Another book to read is Jeff Davidson's Breathing Space. They offer great (stress relieving) stuff for our time-pressed, over-achieving society.

A main thesis of the work is that sleep is critical to peak
mental performance and concentration during the daytime. Sleep deprivation can lead to immune system breakdowns and decreased
memory capability. The author recommends at least 10 hours of
sleep daily for peak performance. In addition, there is a suggestion that we should make up for lost sleep as soon as possible. Some benefit may accrue for workers who get approximately 15-20 minutes of sleep at work . This book will help you to feel better if the advice on optimum sleep is followed. The work contains some important new perspectives on sleeping. The volume is well-researched and current in both
information content and outlook.

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