The Family That Couldn't Sleep

I recently read The Family That Couldn't Sleep by D.T. Max. It's a very narrative book about Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI) and other prion diseases. FFI is a scary yet fascinating rare disease where plaques develop in the thalamus, leading to hallucinations, panic attacks, complete inability to sleep, dementia, and death. It really highlights how central sleep is in our lives. The author describes the history of this and related diseases: kuru, scrapie in sheep, bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("mad cow disease"), chronic wasting disease in deer, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Prions are quite fascinating entities, and one of the Nobel prize winners for prion discovery, Stanley Prusiner, is at UCSF. The book, however, takes a heavy historic and narrative approach, and I wish there was more science. The author is quite opinionated about certain people and doesn't seem to be objective, but it makes the reading interesting. For those who like history of medicine, it's a suggested read.