The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time By Arianna Huffington WH Allen ￡16.99

《睡眠革命》(The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time) 阿里安娜•赫芬顿(Arianna Huffington)著，WH Allen出版，售价16.99英镑。

In April 2007 Arianna Huffington fell over. The journalist, multimillionaire, networker, ex-politician, author and all-round celebrity had got herself overtired. She banged her cheek as she went down. There was some blood.

2007年4月，阿里安娜•赫芬顿昏倒了。这位集记者、亿万富婆、网络工作者、前政客、作家多种角色于一身的全能名流把自己累垮了。倒地时她撞到脸。还见了血。

In the nine intervening years she has turned this tumble into not only an industry but an entire movement. There has been a TED talk, countless media appearances and workshops. Two years ago she published Thrive and now The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time.

之后的9年，她不仅将这次晕厥的经历打造成了产业，还搞成了一场运动。目前已经有一场TED演讲、数不清的媒体采访和专题研讨会。两年前她出版了《成功的第三种维度》(Thrive)一书，如今又出版了《睡眠革命》。

In what her publishers call a “deeply personal exploration of sleep” she tells and retells the story of her fall. She also tells us some other less remarkable ones. She owns some pink pyjamas. And when her daughter ate lots of salty popcorn and watched Ghostbusters she didn’t sleep so well.

她的出版商称这本书为一次“关于睡眠的深度私家探索”，书中她再三诉说着晕倒的经历。也说了些寻常琐事。比如她有几件粉色睡衣。还有她女儿一边看《捉鬼敢死队》（Ghostbusters）一边大嚼咸味爆米花让她没法儿踏实睡觉。

As a life-long sleep hysteric I both revere and deplore the book.

作为一名长期因精神亢奋而失眠的人士，笔者对此书既推崇又反对。

Her central point is quite right: too little sleep isn’t good for us. When we don’t sleep well we are bad tempered, inclined to crash the car, look peaky and can’t do our jobs properly. She argues rightly that it is time to stop boasting about how little sleep we get and brag about how much we get instead.

她的中心思想很正确：睡眠过少对我们不利。睡不好时我们会脾气暴躁、容易撞车、面容憔悴以及无法很好地工作。她说的对，别再吹嘘自己睡得多么少了，应该吹自己获得了充足的睡眠才对。

And yet the tone of the book is all wrong. On the cover Huffington is pictured in a white suit with power shoulders and flowing skirt, seated on a punishingly hard single bed. Weird sleep angel, is the general idea. In the 300 pages that follow, she makes her point with a relentlessness that undermines her case. Good research is spoilt by scaremongering. She tells us that losing an hour’s sleep a week puts us at increased risk of heart attack. Even more moronically she quotes the figure that says too little sleep costs the economy $2,280 per worker per year.

然而全书的基调却都不对劲。书的封面是赫芬顿的照片，照片上她身穿白色套装，高垫肩，大裙摆，坐在一张坚硬的单人床上。整体感觉就是个诡异的睡眠天使。接下来的300页，她长篇大论地阐述她的理论，但如此赘述反而有损说服力。危言耸听糟蹋了书中引用的其他有益的研究成果。她说每周少睡一小时会增加患心脏病的几率。她还没头脑地引用了一个数据，说是睡眠不足的问题给经济造成相当于每个劳动者每年2280美元的损失。

The more she insists that not getting eight hours wrecks our relationships, our looks, our sex life, gives us cancer, heart attacks and diabetes, makes us flunk exams and fail at pretty much everything, the more you want to protest that actually being a bit weary isn’t the end of the world.

她越是强调睡不到8小时会危害我们的人际关系、我们的外表、我们的性生活，让我们罹患癌症、心脏病和糖尿病，令我们考试不及格以及诸事不顺，就让人越想反驳说一点点疲劳并不代表世界末日。

She scans the past — telling us that it was the industrial revolution that did for our sleep — and the future, in which she predicts a new sleepy era is under way. Sports coaches, supermodels and various companies are all starting to see the importance of sleep. A golden age of sleep, she insists, is about to dawn.

她回溯历史——告诉我们是工业革命毁掉了我们的睡眠；而未来，她预言一个新的嗜睡的纪元即将到来。体育教练、超级模特以及形形色色的企业都开始看到了睡眠的重要性。一个睡眠的黄金时代，她坚信，就在眼前。

I wish she were right. I also wish that she had a slightly broader notion of what it is to be sleepless. She understands only the sort of exhaustion that comes from setting up a website, running for political office and never being off the television.

我希望她是对的。我还希望她能对失眠这个概念有更为全面的理解。她仅对因创建网站、竞选公职、以及永远开着电视导致的精疲力尽有所体会。

I also wish Huffington understood more the blessed relief that can come from occasional visits to the medicine chest.

我还希望赫芬顿对那种有时需借助药物才能解脱的失眠多些理解。

As a result of reading a marathon sleep nag, my anxiety levels about not sleeping have not gone down. I’m not meditating; I’m not trying lavender pillows, but I am following Huffington in one big way. I have banished all screens from the bedroom.

在看了这本长篇大论、滔滔不绝论述睡眠的书后，我也并没能降低对失眠的焦虑程度。我没做冥想，我也没试试薰衣草枕头，但是我按赫芬顿的建议做出重要的一步：把所有带屏幕的东西拿出了卧室。

In the five nights since I finished the book it has made a difference. If I can keep it up, she will have transformed my life, just a little bit.

看完这本书后的头5个晚上，确实有了些改变。如果我能坚持下去，她将会让我的生活发生转变，但也只是一点点。