This is not a spiritual book and is very much straight down the line scientific, but it is also poetic and mysterious. Its subtitle is The History and Science of Dreams and that captures it all. The author is a Brazilian professor of neuroscience and he knows most of what there is to know about the brain. The obvious question is Why Do We Dream and the author looks at the whole of human history and culture to try and find out. He ends up coming to some exciting conclusions and along the way we learn a lot about different societies and groups all over the world and their different approaches to sleep and dreams. It also strays into mental illness, nightmares, drugs and a possible end to dreaming as we know it. It’s a big book but it’s never academic and I can’t think of a more authoritative book of dreaming.

480pp, 198 x 129 mm, Paperback, 2022