Other subjects and topics touched upon include science, art, culture, natural history, superstitions, and psychology.

[1] At the time of Acquainted with the Night's writing, author and poet Christopher Dewdney was 52 years old and living in Toronto with his wife, Barbara Gowdy.

The 12 am chapter traces the history behind dream interpretation from Gilgamesh to Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Calvin Hall.

The 4 am chapter provides a geographical aspect, touring the places with long nights, like Las Vegas, caves, the poles, and deep within the oceans.

[11] One reviewer noted the format uses personal observations that lead to discussions of broad subjects with "side trips into relevant supporting materials".

[12] The reviewer for the Quill & Quire cited the book as an example of a subgenre which an article in The Atlantic Monthly dubbed "mundane studies" referring to the ubiquity of the subject, like Mark Kurlansky's Salt: A World History and Witold Rybczynski's One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw.

[13] Dewdney's writing in Acquainted with the Night combines a poet's point of view with an interest for the sciences.

[14] Gisèle Baxter, in the journal Canadian Literature, wrote that its tone was set at the beginning of the book by "an anecdote of a small boy creeping into the moonlit, partly wooded backyard of his family home".

In the United States, Bloomsbury published the hardback version in July 2004 as Acquainted with the Night: A Celebration of the Dark Hours.

[17] Gisèle Baxter, in Canadian Literature, found his use of language "provok[es] consideration through its elegant turns of phrase and image"[15] and Laura Wright, in Discover called the imagery "arresting".

[8] Literary critic Sven Birkerts found Dewdney to be "an engaging enough narrator and solid, enthusiastic stylist".

[13][19] Birkerts concluded "that any one of Dewdney's excursions could earn its keep as a column in a popular science magazine" but assembled into one book the topics seemed random.