Dement, M.D., Ph.D., William C., and Vaughan, Christopher, The Promise of Sleep – A Pioneer in Sleep Medicine Explores the Vital Connection Between Health, Happiness, and a Good Night’s Sleep, 1999.

Dr. William Dement is passionate about the importance of sleep to your overall health and wellbeing. Healthful sleep, he says, has been proven to be the single most important factor in predicting longevity, more influential than diet, exercise or longevity.

Dement is founder of the Stanford University Sleep Research Center, and for decades has been a national leader in the emerging field of sleep medicine. With this book he provides a broad overview of the research about why we sleep, what happens when we don’t, and why some of us can’t.

The book is lengthy, and may tell you more than you want to know about some disorders or other details, but it is surprisingly readable. The survey of years of research is enriched with details about Dement’s own life, and the discussion is not too technical for consumers.

The book was published in 1999, and the field of sleep medicine has been developing rapidly, so this is not the place to go to learn the latest developments. But this is an authoritative overview of how to sleep better, and why you should.