Publishing

By Andrea Sachs/New York

Publishing Trends, an industry newsletter, cites it as "the most controversial medical book ever, hear that, ever published." Or soon to be published, anyway. After a heated auction last month, Pocket Books won the rights to Kept in the Dark: The Killer Connection Between Sleep and Food. The advance was just north of $200,000, a surprisingly hefty sum for a nonfiction book by two unknowns (T.S. Wiley, a medical researcher, and Bent Formby, a cell biologist).

Their theory, according to the proposal circulated to publishing houses, is that obesity and the diseases associated with it are caused by burning the candle at both ends. The idea is that one's body is continually tricked into thinking it's summer, and thus it wants to store up fat for winter. Sleep more, the authors claim, and you'll lose weight. This will no doubt be controversial among scientists and personal trainers and welcomed by almost everyone else.

--By Andrea Sachs/New York