<i>"Miller's narration of the subject is commanding, bright and deft. His prose cuts and flows through the last century of impossibly complex stop-start progress in measuring and quantifying sleep--why we do it, and how. None of it is simple and all of it is captivating."<b></b></i>--<i><b>The New York Times</b></i> <p/> "Mapping the Darkness <i>offers two narratives at once: a sweeping journey of discovery about dreams, sleep and the terra incognita of unconsciousness; and a wake-up call about the dangers of chronic exhaustion. It's time, Mr. Miller tells us, to take our sleep back."</i>--<i><b>The <b><i>W</i></b>all Street Journal</b></i> <p/><b>From award-winning journalist Kenneth Miller comes the definitive story of the scientists who set out to answer two questions: "Why do we sleep?" and "How can we sleep better?" </b> <p/> A century ago, sleep was considered a state of nothingness--even a primitive habit that we could learn to overcome. Then, an immigrant scientist and his assistant spent a month in the depths of a Kentucky cave, making nationwide headlines and thrusting sleep science to the forefront of our consciousness. <p/> In the 1920s, Nathaniel Kleitman founded the world's first dedicated sleep lab at the University of Chicago, where he subjected research participants (including himself) to a dizzying array of tests and tortures. But the tipping point came in 1938, when his cave experiment awakened the general public to the unknown--and vital--world of sleep.