Sleep Works
Sebastian P. Klinger Johns Hopkins Univ. Press (2025)
Before the first study of electroencephalography was published in 1929, sleep science did not exist. Sleep was a mystery; Sigmund Freud excluded it from his 1899 study of dreams. Yet, physicians, drug manufacturers and writers struggling with insomnia, such as Franz Kafka and Marcel Proust, were keenly interested in sleep during those 30 years. These three groups preoccupy cultural historian and literary scholar Sebastian Klinger, who ponders in an engaging book “What kind of activity is sleep? Who sleeps? How can we represent sleep?”
Toxic Tropics
Jessica Oublié et al. Street Noise Books (2025)
Chlordecone is an obsolete insecticide first produced in the United States in 1966. Although it was banned there in 1976, some countries used it for decades more. Until 1993, France allowed its use for banana farming in Guadeloupe and Martinique, where it was found in the water, soils and crops — and 92–95% of people. Journalist Jessica Oublié captures, through the eyes of her family and other islanders, as well as scientists and politicians, this complex, cancerous story in her investigative graphic novel, illustrated by three artists.
The Trouble with Ancient DNA
Anna Källén Univ. Chicago Press (2025)
Ancient DNA’s allure is obvious, writes archaeologist Anna Källén — less so its pitfalls. Through archival records, she traced her ancestry to fourteenth-century Christian mystic Saint Bridget. But it is impossible to confirm their relation, because Bridget’s remains, if they are indeed hers, only contain a few hundred of the three billion base pairs in the human genome. And prehistoric samples are even more tricky. “When we write history with ancient DNA, we are finders of fact and tellers of stories,” her intriguing book concludes.
Live Forever?
John S. Tregoning Oneworld (2025)
