The Twenty Four Hour Society

The author discusses the many negative effects of fatigue brought on by non-stop operations and how they can be avoided.

The author discusses the many negative effects of fatigue brought on by non-stop operations and how they can be avoided.

An international expert on the human biological clock presents research to show the increasing risks in failure to take account of sleep and arousal rhythms in the design of work environments, travel, and tasks - particularly shiftwork. He shows how alertness can be monitored and accidents prevented, and argues for a human-centred society.

Explores sleep disorders, describes breakthroughs in the study of sleep, and considers the impact of modern society on it.

In The Twenty-four Hour Mind, sleep researcher Rosalind Cartwright brings together decades of research into the bizarre sleep disorders known as 'parasomnias' to propose a new theory of how the human brain works consistently throughout waking and sleeping hours, based upon research showing that one of the primary purposes of sleep is to aid in regulating emotions and processing experiences that occur during waking hours.

The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a web-design drone, and serendipity, sheer curiosity and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey have landed him a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. But Clay begins to realize that this store is even more curious than its name suggests. There are only a few customers, but they come in repeatedly and never seem to actually buy anything. Instead they “check out” impossibly obscure volumes from strange corners of the store, all according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes, and soon he has embarked on a complex analysis of the customers’ behaviour and roped his friends into helping him figure out just what’s going on. But once they take their findings to Mr. Penumbra, they discover the secrets extend far beyond the walls of the bookstore. Evoking both the fairy-tale charm of Haruki Murakami and the enthusiastic novel-of-ideas wizardry of Neal Stephenson or Umberto Eco, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is exactly what it sounds like—an establishment you have to enter and will never want to leave.