SPRING FORWARD: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, by Michael Downing. Shoemaker & Hoard. 189 pages. $23.

     If you are the type of person who stopped to wonder why you set your clock forward one hour last night, you might enjoy Michael Downing's new book. Combining diligent research and amusing asides, Downing has assembled a history of a practice that is misunderstood by most, and unquestioningly obeyed by even more.

     The idea that something was wrong with the way our clocks were set was first hinted at in Benjamin Franklin's 1758 Autobiography, when he chided Londoners who lived by candlelight and slept by sunshine. It wasn't until 1907 that British architect William Willett proposed The Daylight Saving Act, a move to push clocks forward 80 minutes every spring.

     Legislators roundly rejected Willett's proposal, but although he was often mocked for it, he publicly campaigned for the Act until his death six years later.

     Ironically, it was the Germans who first adopted the practice of springing forward; they were able to carry out a sneak attack on the British in the First World War as a result of setting their clocks ahead.

     During wartime, many nations adopted the Daylight Saving practice, believing that setting the clocks forward helped conserve energy. After the war, some nations maintained it, others dropped it. The U.S. was split, with bigger cities supporting it, many smaller towns shaking their fists in resistance.

     Downing's book includes many funny stories about disrupted train schedules, prolonged lives on death row, and the like. At times he sets the clock back on himself, however, reiterating anecdotes and opinions as if he has forgotten that he had written them previously: in chapter after chapter, for example, he points out that farmers, although historically cited as the raison d' etre for saving daylight, were one of Daylight Saving's biggest opponents.

     By the way, don't let Downing hear you pluralize the practice to "daylight savings time." His gripe against "this gratuitous s" also gets repeated several times.

     The book's other shortcoming is that it is thorough to a fault. The history of the DST debate is presented in too many redundant newspaper editorials and legislative banterings.      Downing keeps bringing us back to his central point: "Isn't it crazy the way people have dealt with time?"

     The answer is yes, but in the end, "the madness of daylight saving" in Spring Forward isn't enough to fall back upon.

Patrick Healy is a freelance reviewer in Somerville, Mass.