The Secret History of Dreaming by Robert Moss: A Review

If The Secret History of Dreaming (New World Library; 2009) was a person, he or she would be schizophrenic. Acclaimed writer and radio show host Robert Moss doesn't seem to know quite what direction this book should go in. If he had kept to historical facts instead of wandering off on his own bizarre tangents, I would gladly recommend this book. Instead, I only urge you to take it out of a public library and save your money.

Two Parts

The book is divided into two parts. The first is a history of how dreams were used in ancient civilizations such as the Greeks, the Egyptians and the Chinese. This is the best part of the book. It's interesting to see how other civilizations mused about dreams. Like us, they also wondered why they dreamt, where dreams came from and if the people they dreamt about were real. But mostly, dreams were seen as a way to glimpse the future.

The second part falls into the "What's the point of this" territory pretty quickly. It takes a very close view of the dream lives of several historical figures, including Joan of Arc, Mark Twain, Harriet Tubman and Winston Churchill. Although an interesting read, it doesn't quite mesh with the first part of the book. Moss takes liberties with these historical retellings using a technique he calls "dream archeology." In other words -- he made it up.

The Book's Big Problem

The main problem of this book is that Moss, for all of his pages of footnotes and research, mentions that books like the Bible are fact and not mythology. The Bible has not proven to be an accurate historical account by any means. This makes Moss look like a bit of an idiot and taints any credibility he has as an historian. These personal views taint an otherwise interesting history book.

Reading the author blurb at the back of the book, you see that Moss has created a modern dream and shamanism course called Active Dreaming. You can't quite help but wonder if The Secret History of Dreaming was written just as promotional material for his course and his radio show "Way of the Dreamer."

Oh, and there is nothing in the book on lucid dreaming, although the epilogue hints that people in the near future will dream healing dreams as a routine part of their health care. What? I got what he meant -- referring to the Dream Temples in ancient Greece -- but it just seemed out of left field.