This book contends that most Americans don't get enough sleep, and blames that on the use of artificial light. Constant exposure to light, the authors maintain, creates a perpetual summer in the brain, prompting you to eat sugar, store fat, and gain weight. High consumption of carbohydrates, they assert, fosters the development of cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, and mental illness.

To avoid these illnesses, everyone should sleep more, the authors say, nine and one-half hours a night. Forget the low-fat diet advocated by the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, and other health groups. Eat real fat, they say. Buy and eat fresh meat every day, and "always put unwhipped heavy whipping cream in your coffee." And don't exercise too much: it just makes you eat more, and ruins your sex life, too.

These claims bring to mind Woody Allen's film Sleeper. Indeed, the authors cite it themselves. In that film, a twentieth century health-food store owner dies, is frozen and preserved for 200 years. He is brought back to life in a world where scientists proclaim deep fat, steak, and hot fudge to be healthful foods.

These authors, however, apparently wish to be taken seriously. They worked together at the Sansum Medical Research Institute, an independent center for the study of diabetes in Santa Barbara, California. The book jacket identifies Wiley as anthropologist. Formby is said to hold doctorates in biochemistry, biophysics, and molecular biology. They have published two papers together. Formby is the author or co-author of 47 others dating back to the 1960s in the National Library of Medicine's Medline data base. The book contains 100 pages of citations, most from respected scientific journals. The authors also drop names of some prominent sleep researchers.

But their writing is more hyperbole than science. They call carbohydrates "the instrument of death." The book contains numerous glib but meaningless assertions: "Schizophrenia is the ultimate state of insulin resistance in the brain. It is, in effect, cerebral diabetes...." "The pulsing light of the TV screen after dusk erodes melatonin secretion over the long haul by frying your pineal gland."

You won't hear these "truths" from the National Institutes of Health or other health organizations, the authors say. They claim these groups are engaged in a massive conspiracy--for reasons not specified--to keep this information from the public. Conspiracy theories and indulge-yourself diet advice may sell books, but they do readers a disservice. Recent studies at the University of Chicago suggest that chronic sleep loss may accelerate the development of diabetes, high blood pressure, and memory loss. Getting more sleep than most people do today may therefore be good for your health. That is about where science stops in this book and fantasy begins.

One of the book's chapters is called "The best place to hide a lie is between two truths." Readers will find that also applies to the book's contents.