This is a very popular and quite detailed pop science book on sleep written by a prof of neuroscience: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep

This book actually gets quite a lot of hate on HN as parts of it have been debunked (or are at least heavily argued about): https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/

I wouldn't call it "debunked". All these were later answered by author, I don't have sources, but I remember it was on author's blog and also on some podcasts*. I remember that he said all these will be answered also in second edition.

EDIT: 90% sure it was on one of these https://duckduckgo.com/?q=matthew+walker+site%3Apeterattiamd...

Thank you for sharing, this was an interesting read. I wonder if the rest of the book also suffers from this.

To be fair though (not that it excuses it) but pop-science/livestyle book written by academics to gain more notoriety usually suffer from this issue that a lot could be fixed by doing X. Livespan by David Sinclair also does this by basically pinning everything on aging.

It makes for a good read but I think it's best to always keep a healthy skepticism.

Slightly off topic but I always understood these types of books (scientific, biographical, medical) go through extensive fact checking before legit publishers will publish them. Is that not the case? Or did the author just serve as his own fact checker for that book?

I would be very curious to hear of cases where any fact checking at all was done by legit publishers.

Everything I've ever heard about the publishing industry contradicts what you have supposed. But I don't have any real evidence!

Note that this book tells you all about why we sleep, and gives you a lot of scary stats, but almost nothing practical about how to sleep better. If you already know sleep is important and want actionable advice, this book won’t help.

This is not true -- he does give good advice, it's just that it can be summarized in a single page. In fact the last page of the book has his 12 tips. They are widely shared across the internet -- here is one such place: https://fastlifehacks.com/matthew-walker-12-tips-for-good-sl...

So the book is mostly documenting his research into the negative effects of a lack of sleep. Totally worthy and interesting. But the great thing for YOU is that you don't need to read the book. Just those 12 tips.

I'm 41. Over the years I have tried lots of ways to sleep well: various herbs, pills, etc. Ultimately I found, for me, there's no way to hack it. Good sleep is a part of lifestyle. Matthew Walker says the most important thing is routine: now I get in bed at 9:30pm, I read for an hour, I fall asleep around 11pm, I wake up at 6:55, etc. Almost every day, I allow some flex on the weekend. And a party is a party, I give myself a freebie on those (sadly increasingly rare) occasions.

You must get reasonable daily exercise. You can't drink a lot of alcohol and expect to sleep well. Don't bring your devices into the bedroom, read a paper book. Try to get cozy at night. Chamomile tea is wonderful. Look into sleep masks as I found as I got older I became more sensitive to light & a sleep mask helps. Spend some money on your bedroom: a good mattress, fan, blinds, the right temperature, etc.

It totally works! I sleep fantastic these days! Best of luck to you in turn.

The actionable advice for me was just "you have permission to sleep 8 hours, it isn't a waste of your life. No animal escapes the need to sleep, and thinking you can 'game the system' by robbing yourself of sleep night after night is the height of arrogance."

I never had any problem sleeping, I just wouldn't let myself do it enough.

Not books, but I recommend Huberman Lab podcast on YT (at least two episodes on sleep) and https://themattwalkerpodcast.buzzsprout.com/

I second Huberman Lab podcast. He has now a monthly newsletter too, and September’s was about sleep. You can read it here:

https://hubermanlab.com/toolkit-for-sleep/

Thanks for the second suggestion, I’ll have a look.

I third Huberman Lab podcast - he has a lot of great content. His recent one about ADHD was really interesting!