The Lost Art of Sleep
McGirr, Michael

RRP
A$32.99

A wise and funny exploration of quite possibly the best third of your life by the acclaimed author of Things You Get For Free and Bypass.

Bed is the most dangerous place on earth. More people die there than anywhere else. Maybe that's why each passing generation spends less time in bed than the one before.

The arrival of baby twins sent Michael McGirr in search of an ancient practice for which bed is the ideal setting. It's called sleep.

In this warm, witty and engaging book, McGirr muses on the many benefits of sleep; mourns its demise; explains aspects of its strange personality; observes what the brain really gets up to in the small hours, and makes acquaintance with some of the great sleepers and wakers of history, from Aristotle to Thomas Edison, from Homer to Florence Nightingale, from Shakespeare to Peter Pan.

Both a personal journey and a profound exploration of one of life's true constants, The Lost Art of Sleep proves that there are few situations which can't be helped by a good night's kip.

Author Information

Michael McGirr was a Jesuit for 20 years and a Catholic priest for seven. After leaving the church, he went on to become a founding staff member of Eureka Street and has been a regular newspaper columnist and reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age. He was fiction editor of Meanjin from 2001-2005, and in 2005 was the HC Coombs Creative Arts Fellow at the Australian National University. In 2007 Michael moved to Melbourne to take up a position as head of faith and mission at St Kevin's College. He currently lives in Yarraville with his wife and three children.