Randall never gave sleep much thought. That is, until he began sleepwalking. One midnight crash into a hallway wall sent him on an investigation into the strange science of sleep.In Dreamland, Randall explores the research that is investigating those dark hours that make up nearly a third of our lives. Taking readers from military battlefields to children’s bedrooms, Dreamland shows that sleep isn't as simple as it seems. Why did the results of one sleep study change the bookmakers’ odds for certain Monday Night Football games? Do women sleep differently than men? And if you happen to kill someone while you are sleepwalking, does that count as murder?This book is a tour of the often odd, sometimes disturbing, and always fascinating things that go on in the peculiar world of sleep. You’ll never look at your pillow the same way again.

    The topic couldn’t be timelier: As more people are going hungry while simultaneously more people are morbidly obese, American Wasteland sheds light on the history, culture, and mindset of waste while exploring the parallel eco-friendly and sustainable-food movements. As the era of unprecedented prosperity comes to an end, it’s time to reexamine our culture of excess.Working at both a local grocery store and a major fast food chain and volunteering with a food recovery group, Bloom also interviews experts—from Brian Wansink to Alice Waters to Nobel Prize–winning economist Amartya Sen—and digs up not only why and how we waste, but, more importantly, what we can do to change our ways.

    Small-scale, self-contained worm bins can be kept indoors, in a basement or even under the kitchen sink in an apartment — making vermicomposting a great option for city dwellers and anyone who doesn’t want or can’t have an outdoor compost pile. The fully revised 35th anniversary edition features the original’s same friendly tone, with up-to-date information on the entire process, from building or purchasing a bin (readily available at garden supply stores), maintaining the worms, and harvesting the finished compost.

    Rejecting both end-times hand wringing and dewy-eyed faith that technology will save us from ourselves, urban homesteaders choose instead to act. By growing their own food and harnessing natural energy, they are planting seeds for the future of our cities.If you would like to harvest your own vegetables, raise city chickens, or convert to solar energy, this practical, hands-on book is full of step-by-step projects that will get you started homesteading immediately, whether you live in an apartment or a house. It is also a guidebook to the larger movement and will point you to the best books and Internet resources on self-sufficiency topics.Projects include: How to grow food on a patio or balcony How to clean your house without toxins How to preserve food How to cook with solar energy How to divert your greywater to your garden How to choose the best homestead for you Written by city dwellers for city dwellers, this illustrated, smartly designed, two-color instruction book proposes a paradigm shift that will improve our lives, our community, and our planet. Authors Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen happily farm in Los Angeles and run the urban homestead blog www.homegrownrevolution.org.

    If everyone in the United States refused their receipts, it would save a roll of paper more than two billion feet long, or enough to circle the equator fifteen times!- Turn off the tap while you brush your teeth. You'll conserve up to five gallons of water per day. Throughout the entire United States, the daily savings could add up to more water than is consumed every day in all of New York City.- Get a voice-mail service for your home phone. If all answering machines in U.S. homes were replaced by voice-mail services, the annual energy savings would total nearly two billion kilowatt hours. The resulting reduction in air pollution would be equivalent to removing 250,000 cars from the road for a year!With wit and authority, authors Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas Kostigen provide hundreds of solutions for all areas of your life, pinpointing the smallest changes that have the biggest impact on the health of our precious planet.

    Everywhere we turn, someone is preaching the “One True Way” to eat for maximum health. Paleo Diet advocates tell us that all foods less than 12,000 years old are the enemy. Low-carb gurus demonize carbs, then there are the low-fat prophets. But they agree on one thing: there is only one true way to eat for maximum health. The first clue that that is a fallacy is the sheer variety of diets advocated. Indeed, while all of these competing views claim to be backed by “science,” a good look at actual nutritional science itself suggests that it is impossible to identify a single best way to eat. Fitzgerald advocates an agnostic, rational approach to eating habits, based on one’s own habits, lifestyle, and genetics/body type. Many professional athletes already practice this “Good Enough” diet, and now we can too and ditch the brainwashing of these diet cults for good.

    The microbiota interacts with our bodies in a number of powerful ways; the Sonnenburgs argue that it determines in no small part whether we’re sick or healthy, fit or obese, sunny or moody. The microbiota has always been with us, and in fact has coevolved with humans, entwining its functions with ours so deeply, the Sonnenburgs show us, humans are really composite organisms having both microbial and human parts. But now, they argue, because of changes to diet, antibiotic over-use, and over-sterilization, our gut microbiota is facing a “mass extinction event,” which is causing our bodies to go haywire, and may be behind the mysterious spike in some of our most troubling modern afflictions, from food allergies to autism, cancer to depression. It doesn’t have to be this way.The Good Gut offers a new plan for health that focuses on how to nourish your microbiota, including recipes and a menu plan. In this groundbreaking work, the Sonnenburgs show how we can keep our microbiota off the endangered species list and how we can strengthen the community that inhabits our gut and thereby improve our own health. The answer is unique for each of us, and it changes as you age. In this important and timely investigation, the Sonnenburgs look at safe alternatives to antibiotics; dietary and lifestyle choices to encourage microbial health; the management of the aging microbiota; and the nourishment of your own individual microbiome. Caring for our gut microbes may be the most important health choice we can make.

    

    You regularly handle the filthiest object in your home -- the kitchen sponge -- and put the same chemicals on your face that are used in brake fluid and antifreeze. The cleaning agents and personal care products commonly marketed to and used in American homes contain not only some very dangerous, toxic chemicals, but they also create an "overly clean," chemically bombed-out house that compromises immune systems. And with more than fifty million Americans suffering from allergies and other autoimmune diseases -- not to mention the developing and fragile immune systems of children and seniors -- large numbers of people are actually being made sicker and sicker by their homes.Learn to live a clean, healthy, more economical way with Ellen Sandbeck, the nontoxic avenger. In this must-have book for the twenty-first- century home, this passionate, witty advocate of all things organic will teach you how to maintain every part of the home -- from living room to septic tank, kitchen floor to bathroom sink -- using safe, simple cleansers and quick preventative measures as well as the most effective organic products on the market to get the job done.Learn time-saving, preventative housekeeping, such as taking thirty seconds to clean the shower while you shower. Take care of bathroom stains with baking soda and vinegar rather than commercial, toxic bathroom "bombs" peddled to you with such force by manufacturers. Need whiter whites? There is no bleaching power on earth stronger than the sun. Snow clean your fine rugs. Choose fruits and vegetables from the relatively pesticide residue-free list. Clean felt-tipped pen stains with vodka. Make furniture shine with olive oil and lemon. Your house will also smell as great as it looks.

    In fact, your body is actually endowed with many self-defense measures to hold on to fat. For example, fat can use stem cells to regenerate; increase our appetite if it feels threatened; and use bacteria, genetics, and viruses to expand itself. The secret to losing twenty pounds? You have to work with your fat, not against it. Tara explains how your fat influences your appetite and willpower, how it defends itself when attacked, and why it grows back so quickly. The Secret Life of Fat brings cutting-edge research together with historical perspectives to reveal fat’s true identity: an endocrine organ that, in the right amount, is critical to our health. Fat triggers puberty, enables our reproductive and immune systems, and even affects brain size.Although we spend $60 billion annually fighting fat, our efforts are often misinformed and misdirected. Tara expertly illustrates the complex role that genetics, hormones, diet, exercise, and history play in our weight, and The Secret Life of Fat sets you on the path to beat the bulge once and for all.

    Ratey, MD.Did you know you can beat stress, lift your mood, fight memory loss, sharpen your intellect, and function better than ever simply by elevating your heart rate and breaking a sweat? The evidence is incontrovertible: Aerobic exercise physically remodels our brains for peak performance. In SPARK, John J. Ratey, M.D., embarks upon a fascinating and entertaining journey through the mind-body connection, presenting startling research to prove that exercise is truly our best defense against everything from depression to ADD to addiction to aggression to menopause to Alzheimer's. Filled with amazing case studies (such as the revolutionary fitness program in Naperville, Illinois, which has put this school district of 19,000 kids first in the world of science test scores), SPARK is the first book to explore comprehensively the connection between exercise and the brain. It will change forever the way you think about your morning run---or, for that matter, simply the way you think

    Doctor, Harvard professor, renowned infectious-disease specialist, anthropologist, the recipient of a MacArthur "genius" grant, world-class Robin Hood, Farmer was brought up in a bus and on a boat, and in medical school found his life’s calling: to diagnose and cure infectious diseases and to bring the lifesaving tools of modern medicine to those who need them most.Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes minds and practices through his dedication to the philosophy that "the only real nation is humanity"—a philosophy that is embodied in the small public charity he founded, Partners in Health. He enlists the help of the Gates Foundation, George Soros, the U.N.’s World Health Organization, and others in his quest to cure the world. At the heart of this book is the example of a life based on hope, and on an understanding of the truth of the Haitian proverb "Beyond mountains there are mountains": as you solve one problem, another problem presents itself, and so you go on and try to solve that one too.

    Friedman speaks to America's urgent need for national renewal and explains how a green revolution can bring about both a sustainable environment and a sustainable America. Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the expansion of the world’s middle class through globalization have produced a dangerously unstable planet--one that is "hot, flat, and crowded."  In this Release 2.0 edition, he also shows how the very habits that led us to ravage the natural world led to the meltdown of the financial markets and the Great Recession.  The challenge of a sustainable way of life presents the United States with an opportunity not only to rebuild its economy, but to lead the world in radically innovating toward cleaner energy.  And it could inspire Americans to something we haven't seen in a long time--nation-building in America--by summoning the intelligence, creativity, and concern for the common good that are our greatest national resources. Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman: fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the challenge--and the promise--of the future.

    Forty-four million Americans suffer from low bone mass, and osteoporosis is responsible for more than 1.5 million fractures annually. Drugs and surgeries can alleviate pain, but study after study has shown that exercise is the best treatment, specifically low-impact, bone-strengthening exercises—hence, yoga.In this comprehensive and thoroughly illustrated guide, Loren Fishman and Ellen Saltonstall, who between them have seven decades of clinical experience, help readers understand osteoporosis and give a spectrum of exercises for beginners and experts. Classical yoga poses, as well as physiologically sound adapted poses, are presented with easy-to-follow instructions and photographs. The authors welcome readers of all ages and levels of experience into the healing and strengthening practice of yoga.

    It is something right beneath our feet-the Earth itself!Throughout most of evolution humans walked barefoot and slept on the ground, largely oblivious that the surface of the Earth contains limitless healing energy. Science has discovered this energy as free-flowing electrons constantly replenished by solar radiation and lightning. Few people know it, but the ground provides a subtle electric signal that maintains health and governs the intricate mechanisms that make our bodies work-just like plugging a lamp into a power socket makes it light up. Modern lifestyle, including the widespread use of insulative rubber or plastic-soled shoes, has disconnected us from this energy and, of course, we no longer sleep on the ground as we did in times past.Earthing introduces the planet's powerful, amazing, and overlooked natural healing energy and how people anywhere can readily connect to it. This eye-opening book describes how the physical disconnect with the Earth creates abnormal physiology and contributes to inflammation, pain, fatigue, stress, and poor sleep. By reconnecting to the Earth, symptoms are rapidly relieved and even eliminated and recovery from surgery, injury, and athletic overexertion is accelerated.This never-before-told story-filled with fascinating research and real-life testimonials- chronicles a discovery with the potential to create a global health revolution.About the AuthorClinton Ober started as a cable TV salesman in Billings, Montana, and rose to become a leader in the industry. Following a near fatal disease in 1993, he embarked on a personal journey looking for a higher purpose in life. Since discovering Earthing he has been devoted to promoting the scientific exploration and practical applications for the concept.Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D., F.A.C.C., is a board-certified cardiologist, a certified bioenergetic psychotherapist, and a certified nutrition and anti-aging specialist. He is the author of the best-selling book The Sinatra Solution: Metabolic Cardiology.Martin Zucker has written extensively on natural healing, fitness, and alternative medicine for thirty years.