Rating: 
Summary: Do you really need 10 hours?
Review: Let me save you some time with this book: the author says you need more sleep. 10 hours in fact. If you fall asleep when your head hits the pillow, you are likely sleep deprived and you need more time sleeping. If you are in this category (as am I) this book won't help much, beyond some good tips on napping. If you cannot fall asleep easily, or wake often, this book has lots of detailed advice, from how to decorate your bedroom and what to do there, to when to eat dinner, what not to drink, watch on TV, and so on. This is probably a useful book for those who cannot sleep. Me? I should have skipped it and caught an extra hour.
Rating: 
Summary: Useful
Review: Not having problems with sleeping and appreciating it's importance, this book is not really for me: it soon becomes very clear that the author's two basic thesis for writing this book are 1) that you are so consumed by hectic pace of everyday life that you almost consider sleeping a waste of time, and 2) that you hardly have any idea on how detrimental is such an attitude to you, your energy, mood and success, and the people around you. Even if you did start reading the book, Dr. Maas is concerned that you aren't truly interested and that you might drop it any moment. One has to appreciate his attempts in keeping your interest by writing short chapters with small units, many illustrations (photographs or cartoons), his own attempts in writing wittily (with mixed results), and plenty of repetitions of most important points. I thought that a good part of what is written is common knowledge. On the other hand, there are things that I hoped would be explained which aren't even mentioned. For example, what are the biological mechanisms (and how they work) that affect some peoples' need for sleep when it's full moon, what are the hormonal changes that occur when a very fatigued individual after skipping a night or two feels his/her sex drive has increased rather than decreased (which would be expected)... you will not find anything on such phenomena in the book. The impact of sleep deprivation on one's mood and emotions is mentioned but not really explained. There are two things that I consider particularly good: a short true-or-false test with popular notions about sleep which one can complete in about 5 minutes, and which can be very motivational, and the Peak Performance Sleep Log which a reader is supposed to keep during several weeks. It's a simple record of factors that affect your sleep and even though one can occasionally feel silly keeping the log, it helped in finding a pattern where previously I did not think there was one. I believe Dr. Maas' claim that after a few weeks people may "discover, perhaps for the first time, what it really feels like to be fully alert all day long." As he says "If you're getting less than eight hours of sleep each night, including weekends, or if you fall asleep instantly, or need an alarm clock to wake up, consider yourself one of millions of chronically sleep-deprived people - perhaps blissfully ignorant of how sleepy and ineffective you are, or how dynamic you could be with adequate sleep." To conclude: if I have felt mislead into buying this book it's more because of the way publisher presented it than it is about the book's claim: the author makes it perfectly clear who is his target readership. As other reviewers have noted, there isn't much "revolutionary" about this book. Nevertheless, I did find it useful and consider it a good introduction to the topic. In addition, it contains numerous references, including web-sites, addresses of sleep disorder centers in the USA etc. which one can follow.
Rating: 
Summary: WAKE UP!
Review: Power Sleep is a dynamic and lucid book that I highly recommend to any individual who wants to live a more stress free life and maximize his or her daytime performance. As a first year college student, I did not realize the vitality of sleep in my life. Many college students do not realize how the amount of continuous nocturnal sleep they get affects other aspects of their life, including their ability to retain new information; however, Dr. Maas crystallizes these points. Dr. Maas' lucidity and practicality allow the reader to fully comprehend and conceptualize the information presented. For example, instead of Maas using dreary drawn-out language to describe the nightly sleep cycle, he incorporates friendly diagrams and brief explanations. Dr. Maas uses writing techniques which promote reader participation. For example, throughout the book, Maas asks several rhetorical questions, such as, "are you getting enough sleep?" These questions stimulate the reader to have a mental response, and therefore, interact with the book. Dr. Maas, fully achieved his purpose of informing the reader about the importance of sleep and ways of overcoming sleep deprivation. Read the book with intentions to change your life!
Rating:
Summary: Not revolutionary but a good introduction to Sleep.
Review: While this book manages to give valuable advices about managing sleep, it offers nothing `revolutionary`. The advices given could be summarized in 20 pages or so. The book is filled with repetitions and repetitions, and repetitions and warnings and warnings and warnings about the importance of sleeping well in one`s life. As for the the advices themselves, they are also repeated but stay vague. They do help sometimes, but not always (to sleep well, stress less). All in all, a good introduction to sleep that gives you the willingness to take care of your sleep.
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