Denigration of the critical need for rest has deep roots in American culture. For more than two centuries, a chorus of influential voices, virtually all male, has proclaimed sleep a vice and sleep deprivation a virtue. This attitude has remained both prevalent and relatively constant up to the very recent past. To be sure, some in elite circles have contested this dismissive stance and defended moderation. But on balance, potent promoters of sleep deprivation have done more to shape values and assumptions. The resulting habitus has governed thinking on sleeping time for the American workforce in the modern age.

Americans...

Unless the slumbering flagman failed to protect a train full of passengers, his risky situation represented no public concern. Over the course of the twentieth century, the state did nothing to help ensure necessary sleep for the vast majority of the nation’s workers (or for other members of society, for that matter). Instead, the prevailing policy in America has been to acquiesce in, if not to encourage, overwork, at the expense of sleep. Where public authority has limited working time, the interventions have targeted those whose sleeplessness posed a threat to general welfare. From that perspective, in the early part...

Making steel in America at the turn of the twentieth century depended on a system of long working hours that guaranteed sleep deprivation for the men and boys who toiled under it. Some departments in the mills ran twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. A severe imbalance of power between labor and capital turned the technological necessity of continuous operations into an inhumane grind that exploited masses of immigrant laborers and large numbers of native workers as well. Those in control of the industry demanded from hundreds of thousands of employees a twelve-hour day and a seven-day week....

During hearings held by the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations in 1915, commission chair Frank Walsh asked railway sleeping-car porter G. H. Sylvester about opportunities to sleep on his overnight run on the Twentieth Century Limited from New York to Chicago. Sylvester was responsible for preparing the berths for a carload of passengers and for meeting their many needs related to getting a full, comfortable night’s rest. But he had no such expectations for himself or his coworkers. Sylvester’s employer, the Pullman Company, which held a virtual monopoly on the sleep services business on the nation’s railroads, chose not to...

Unlike almost all other American workers, over-the-road truckers stood a sizable chance of dying as an immediate result of falling asleep during the performance of their job. Hauling freight hundreds or thousands of miles, usually alone, presented unique difficulties in balancing sleep and wakefulness, as well as distinctive consequences for the imbalances between them. Long-haul drivers met safety threats primarily through their own efforts, both individual and collective. To a very limited extent, they also benefited from the intervention of the state. Until quite recently neither public nor private parties have tackled the more subtle health consequences of truckers’ inadequate...

Flexibility has become a catchword of the current age. Just as efficiency served as the shibboleth at the turn of the twentieth century, a cult of adaptability has arisen at the turn of the twenty-first. From the popularity of yoga through the vogue of the lean and virtual organization, American culture celebrates individuals and organizations with the capacity to initiate endless changes, engage in nimble multitasking, and adjust smoothly to unexpectedly changing conditions. Especially within the business community, with its cultural power, flexibility has become a mantra. Wal-Mart Stores transformed corporate thinking on fluid methods of moving merchandise. Best sellers...