The Sleep Revolution

By: Arianna Huffington

Narrated by: Agapi Stassinopoulos

Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's Summary

In her new book, Arianna Huffington, the cofounder and editor in chief of The Huffington Post and the author of the number-one New York Times best seller Thrive , delves into the sleep revolution that is happening all across the world - a revolution that can transform our lives. 

Sleep, she writes, is one of humanity's great unifiers, binding us to each other, to our ancestors, to our past, and to the future. Yet we find ourselves in the middle of a crisis of sleep deprivation, with devastating effects on our health, our happiness, our job performance, and our relationships. Only by renewing our relationship with sleep, she writes, can we take control of our lives, live more fully, and be more engaged with ourselves and with the world and more able to meet the inevitable challenges we all face. 

In Thrive, Arianna Huffington introduced her audience to the importance of sleep as a part of redefining success through well-being, wisdom, wonder, and giving. The topic struck such a powerful chord, resonating so intensely with her audiences around the world, that she realized the power of sleep needed a full exploration. The result is a sweeping, scientifically rigorous, and deeply personal look at sleep, from its history through the ages and the current crisis of sleep deprivation to the mysteries of dreams and the golden age of sleep science that is revealing all the ways sleep plays a vital role in our health, happiness, well-being, and productivity. 

In The Sleep Revolution, Arianna identifies the many ways our cultural dismissal of sleep as time wasted undermines our health and our decision making and ravages our relationships, our work lives, and even our sex lives. She takes on sleep from every angle, exploring the latest science on sleep, the manipulative and dangerous sleeping pill industry, and all the ways our addiction to technology disrupts our sleep. She also presents scientific recommendations and expert tips on how we can all achieve better and more restorative sleep and learn how to make the power of sleep work for us. 

Most important, by highlighting the many areas where sleep's benefits are being rediscovered - from the world of sports and technology to college campuses, the hotel industry, and even workplaces around the world - she points the way forward to amazing innovations, reforms, and inventions rooted in our new love affair with sleep. 

In today's 24/7, fast-paced, always-connected, perpetually harried, and sleep-deprived world, the hunger for sleep is only getting stronger. The Sleep Revolution both sounds the alarm on the worldwide sleep crisis and offers a road map for how we can take back our sleep and transform our lives and our world. 

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.  

©2015 Arianna Huffington (P)2015 Random House Audio

Skip the audio version of this book. Consider other titles.

The thick Greek accent of the narrator sacrifices clarity for an attempt at authenticity.

The book makes valid points, but the content could be condensed SIGNIFICANTLY into:

-Sleep is important for excellent performance in all life’s endeavors (Work, politics, athletics, sex, etc.)
-Sleep has been acknowledged throughput history to be important.
-Dreams are fascinating.
-Relying on medications to get sleep can be dangerous.
-Sleep deprivation is hazardous to your health.
-Technology exists to support sleep improvement.

If one has an interest in any of these areas, time would be better spent seeking out a publication which dives more deeply into that topic.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

Good content poorly delivered

Would you try another book from Arianna Huffington and/or Agapi Stassinopoulos?

Arianna Huffington probably but Agapi Stassinoplolous no.

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

Hard to tell based upon the delivery

How did the narrator detract from the book?

Completely! It may be a combination of the writer or editor but is more than like a poor reader and/or conductor. The second language provides an out of sync/not a smooth flowing story and it's difficult to follow the performance in what is a quote at the beginning of a chapter and what is the authors work. Do all the chapters start with a quote? Hard to tell from the performance. Is the correct emphasis placed in the sentence? Not really. It's almost like listening to a child recite their first books.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

No.

Any additional comments?

Would like to have it read by a different performer and a free update.Will see if I can return it.

11 of 13 people found this review helpful

Hard to understand

The heavy accent made it quite difficult for me to understand the material. I think for the sake of all listeners (who arent native english speakers like myself) out there the books should be read by the most common and easily understandable diction.

6 of 7 people found this review helpful

Common sense with data to back it up

Useful information and an interesting perspective, but at times it was hard to listen to the narrator.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Life changing

I was curious about this topic. When I saw the book (I think it was the first day available) I didn't hesitate to buy it. I always read the reviews first, before I purchase - but there weren't any at that time . So I just bought it.

The book was so informative and interesting. Very well read too. It has definitely made me more aware of my sleep habits and approach to sleep. I think my whole family will benefit from my having read this book.

Hopefully we will all get the sleep our bodies and mind need and then we will all be much nicer to each other. Imagine that world! Sleep = peace and love. Thanks Ariana, for writing this book.

7 of 9 people found this review helpful

Horrible narration

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

Someone who can understand English spoken with a thick Greek accent

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of Agapi Stassinopoulos?

Anyone who can speak decent English with a normal accent and clear pronunciation

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

disappointment and stress from trying to understand the words spoken with un-intelligible pronunciation.

Any additional comments?

An absolute waste of time. It takes so much energy to try to understand the words that are pronounced so badly that it is almost impossible to follow the message

17 of 23 people found this review helpful

Horrible Reading Voice

What disappointed you about The Sleep Revolution?

Arianna is a very impressive and credible person, but the content just went on and on, I was looking for the meat, this is mostly bread. I was happy that she choose someone else to read the book for us. I got confused, I thoughe Arianna was only reading the intro, then I kept waiting for the 'Other Person' to start reading chapter 1... but then it went on and on in that hard to understand grating voice, I realized she hired someone who sounds just like her to read the whole thing, omg so disappointing. What a huge self-ego-serving mistake. Arianna, you are cool, but your voice is really hard for Americans to understand and it can get very annoying. Even my wife and kids commented on how horrible the voice was. I may want to get my money back, I will give it 30 more minutes and really look for content, one last time.

What was most disappointing about Arianna Huffington’s story?

the voice is really annoying.

How could the performance have been better?

get a different voice please.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from The Sleep Revolution?

put more MEAT at the front of the book.

Any additional comments?

change the voice, do an ABRIDGED version.

19 of 26 people found this review helpful

Great info

It took several chapters for me to understand the narrator. The content was great though.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Listening to this book would put me to sleep...

... if it weren't for the reader.
Before downloading this book, I read the reviews about the reader's distracting Greek accent and how the content was essentially a compilation of online searches.
I thought, "surely, it can't be THAT bad!"
I was wrong. It is.
At first, I found the reader's voice charming. It did occur to me that having a heavily-accented Greek woman reading the book was unnecessary. I mean, I get it. Huffington is Greek and she sounds like this. But she's not reading the book. Her accent is unnecessary to the narration and, after a while, extremely distracting. Especially when she mispronounces words. This is not a biography. A native Greek reader is not necessary for the delivery. If the author really wanted her voice in the book, she should have read it herself.
As for the content, it really is badly organized and just a series of references to study after study.
For instance, I don't have kids, so knowing about how kids sleep, at whatever age, is not useful or interesting to me. But it's peppered throughout. And it drones on and on.
A whole chapter on dreams? WHO CARES?!
Like I said, this book WOULD put me to sleep if the reader's voice wasn't so grating.
A huge disappointment.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

If you struggle with sleep, look elsewhere

This book is written for people who know nothing about this topic and do not think that sleep is important at all. For those people, this might be worth reading. But for everyone else who struggles with specific sleep problems and wants more sleep, the book offers nothing useful or enlightening.

Narrator: She had a strong accent, but I didn't mind the narrator. The speed was perfect for me.