{"product_id":"the-family-that-couldnt-sleep","title":"The Family That Couldn't Sleep","description":"\u003cp\u003eCan there be a nastier way to die than from a chronic inability to sleep? How this appalling affliction killed dozens of members of one aristocratic Venetian family over the last three centuries only to emerge in the 1990s as the key to the hunt for the cause of a cluster of diseases - including Mad Cow  Alzheimers and scrapie - is the utterly compelling  surprising story told here. This work is for readers of cultured science writers like Jared Diamond  Steve Jones and Stephen Jay Gould  but also fans of Oliver Sacks and Alain de Botton. In 1765  Venetian doctors were stumped by the death of a man who had suffered from chronic insomnia for more than a year and spent his final months paralyzed by exhaustion. Over the next two centuries  many of his descendants developed the same fatal sleep-stealing symptoms  and their loved ones were forced to witness a most excruciating lingering death  whose cause continued to baffle the experts until the 1990s when their sickness was recognized as a rare heritable disease. In this atmospheric and groundbreaking work of detection  Max tells the history of the rogue condition that has blighted one unlucky family for generations.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44966789840949,"sku":"ByrdShop_1846270898","price":92.05,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781846270895.jpg?v=1770580474","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-family-that-couldnt-sleep","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}