T. S. Wiley - Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival

The first round of thanks goes to our families for their patience and support. Bent's Florence is in line for sainthood and my Neil is, and has been, forever my very own Medici. I am nothing without him. My children, poor neglected Jake, Max, Zoe, and Ian remain the best kids on the planet. This endeavor took five long years for me and almost three for my partner. In that time, our families put up with more science talk morning, noon and night than anybody should ever have to. More often than not, their dinners were late and their misery was palpable, but yet, they still love us and we're grateful.

To my older daughters, Mara and Aja, I am especially indebted for their rare and diverse intellects that served to inspire and expand my own. Mara Raden spent unending hours in insightful debate, provided many evolutionary and neuroendocrine concepts, unconditional encouragement and a lot of the early, tedious editing. Aja Raden, as creative consultant, came up with the title of this book, many of the chapter titles and more than a few of the sound bites/subheads. She also spent countless hours explaining physics, chemistry and math to her old mom.

Wiley Lorente proved blood is thicker than ink by working side by side with me, editing, reorganizing and just plain suffering for all five years and fourteen versions. And to my partner, the incredible Dr. Bent Formby, thank you. Thank you for understanding what I was saying before you gave me the words to say it. Thank you for being the world's greatest teacher and mentor. Thank you for your great ability to grow and change. Without your thousands of hours of research, my theories were just theories. Bent, you are the other half of my brain.

Many of our other colleagues served as collaborators, too. Dr. Julie Taguchi at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara; Dr. Alex Depaoli, now at Amgen; Dr. Eve Van Cauter and Dr. Martha McClintock at the University of Chicago; Ernst Mayr at Harvard; and Anthony Cincotta at Ergo Science all allowed me to pick their brains on more than one occasion. And, of course, the great minds forced to collaborate at the NIH, Dr. Thomas Wehr, his post-doc Holly Giessen and Dr. Ellen Leibenluft.

My personal assistant, Chelsey Haskins, labored over edits and endnotes endlessly and our office manager, Krista Silva, compiled Bent's voluminous research. Both of them spent way too many hours at FedEx and on e-mail, and just generally putting up with me. The others too numerous to name to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude are all of the voluntary readers and the guinea pigs who have believed in and tried out our theories.

Perhaps the most stalwart soldier of all in our crusade to bring back the night is our agent, Deborah Schneider. She identified and rallied behind the truth years before we had the research to prove it. Without her visionary support and talented representation, we would have never joined forces with the amazing people at Pocket Books. My first conversation with Emily Bestler and Jane Cavolina convinced me that no other publishers would do. Their enthusiasm and rare intelligence that radiated over the phone across three thousand miles that day continues to warm my heart to this one.

My editor is a phrase that truly gets me through the night. Jane Cavolina has taken ownership of this project and truly convinced me, once and for all, that we're not all in this alone. Her self-described house cleaning metaphor for the artistry of her editing does her no justice. She made the writing process, version after version, utterly painless and the final product something I am deeply proud of in a profound way.

Thank you, Jane.

And last, but by no means least, we thank Pam Duevel. If you're holding this book it is thanks to Pam Duevel, the absurdly talented, ridiculously creative, hard working leader of the publicity team at Pocket Books assigned to get this information into the hands of the people who need it.

T. S. Wiley