'A fascinating book!which makes a powerful case for spending more time unconscious and explains the damaging effect on our lives of not spending enough. Martin makes an overwhelming case for valuing sleep more!If you read Martin's book, you will be persuaded to buy the most comfortable bed and mattress that you can afford. It could be the best investment you ever make.' Mary Ann Sieghart, The Times 'Energetic and immensely readable!This is as good a popular science book as I have read, which is to say it treads lightly but comprehensively across a relatively complex subject without shirking its responsibility to explain and illuminate. Martin's achievement is to do this with such vivacity and infectious enthusiasm that by the end of the book you'll be racing for your bed to try out a few sleepy experiments for yourself!I've read countless books on sleep, but rarely have I encountered one as sure-footed and hospitable as this.' Melanie McGrath, Evening Standard 'Bracingly clear and thoroughly researched ! a masterpiece of efficiently and entertainingly delivered information. ! you will find no more brisk and intelligible account. ! a compendious celebration of the delights of sleep.' Bryan Appleyard, New Statesman 'Paul Martin's novelty is his polemical verve!He writes what I still rejoice in calling natural history. He knows the research and quotes widely and appropriately from literature. You could see Counting Sheep as an antidote to the symptoms of the frenetic society delineated by James Gleick in Faster. I hope it does as well, either as in instant hit or as a sleeper.' Guardian 'Like many parents of small children, I have become obsessed by sleep, to the point where it strikes me as a more gripping subject for a book than almost any other! Reading Paul Martin's account of Charles Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic in 1927 in a one-seater plane, I experienced strong feelings of identification, almost of kinship, with the nocturnal desperado for whom sleep is at once an enemy and an object of desire! Even if you don't buy into the dark side of sleep deprivation, Martin's mourning of the lost pleasures of languor might win you over! To me, at least, it sounds irresistible.' Rachel Cusk, Daily Telegraph

• Chosen as a Book of the Year in the Guardian by Margaret Drabble. • For all those who would like to sleep longer, better, sounder. • The real reasons we snore or sleepwalk or stay awake or fall asleep at the wrong time – revealed! • Subjects include: nocturnal erections (we all have them, 2 hours a night, women too); lucid dreams (in which you can learn to control the course of your dream); alcohol and its effects on sleep; the relationship between dreaming and creativity; the importance of sleep for learning and memory; the mystery of yawning; humanity's dependence on caffeine; insomnia; snoring; and the effects of chronic sleep deprivation on doctors, drivers, air crew and politicians. • Appeal beyond the usual popular science market to those interested in how the great artists have depicted and analysed sleep and its lack. • No comparable book exists • Shortlisted for the MIND Book of the Year 2003 Competition: Desmond Morris, Steve Jones, Matt Ridley, Oliver Sacks