SLEEPLESS PLANET

A graphic artist lays out at least some of insomnia’s causes while recording her own journey toward getting a better night’s sleep.

Having finally recognized the fallacy of measuring success by productivity alone, Burdock sets out to explain how she found ways over three years to “rewild” herself through changes in diet and behavior as a means of countering the constant high anxiety that kept her awake. In sections titled after the four classical elements, she recalls, for instance, learning breath control by playing a didgeridoo, controlling her sleep apnea by simply laying a piece of tape across her lips, and leaving all of her devices, even her smartwatch, in another room at night to get a better handle on her circadian rhythms. What the author is really offering here, though, is less a catalog of practical techniques for insomniacs than a set of scorching indictments against modern Western practices and values that lead to those long nights—most particularly the evils of bottle feeding, junk foods, and big pharma. As the makers of Crisco, Procter & Gamble “became the first corporation to market industrial waste as food,” writes the author, while condemning the modern nutritional privileging of carbs over fats. Is it any wonder that 70% of all Americans are overweight, as she claims, when so much of what they eat comes from the “Golden Starches”? Even readers reluctant to join her in saying no to “capitalist time and corporate food” should agree with her insight that obesity is more often a symptom of public and personal health issues than their cause. Too many talking heads and relatively static selfies in her dark, technically adept monochrome images only add further heaviness to the narrative’s lecture-some language and tone. Still, color pictures at the section heads do provide some visual relief—and closer examination reveals a puckish sense of humor best expressed by an embodiment of menopause as a leering, heavyset termagant perched on the suffering author’s shoulders.

A wake-up call for nonsleepers, message driven but with saving glints of humor.