Our sun drives the weather, forms the landscape, feeds and fuels - but sometimes destroys - the creatures that live upon it, controls their patterns of activity, makes chemicals in the skin that cheer up those who bask in its rays, and for the ancients was the seat of divine authority. In Here Comes the Sun, Steve Jones shows how life on Earth is ruled by our nearest star. It is filled with unexpected connections; between the need to stay cool and man's ability to stand upright, between the power of memory and the onset of darkness, between the flow of solar energy through the plants and animals and of wealth through society, and between Joseph Goebbel's 1938 scheme to make Edinburgh the summer capital of a defeated Britain and the widening gap in the life expectancy of Scottish men compared to that of other European men brought on by thnat nation's cloudy climate. Its author charts some of his own research in places hot and cold across the globe on the genetic and evolutionary effects of sunlight on snails, fruit-flies and people and shows how what was once no more an eccentric specialism has grown to become a subject of wide scientific, social and political significance. Stunningly evocative, beautifully written and packed full of insight, Here Comes the Sun is Steve Jones's most personal book to date.

スティーヴ・ジョーンズが描く本作は、太陽という絶対的な君主への壮大な讃歌です。遺伝学を軸に、カタツムリから人類の直立歩行、さらには社会の格差までもが太陽光という一本の糸で繋がれていく様は圧巻。科学的知見が詩的な筆致で綴られ、私たちの存在が如何に宇宙的な調和の上に成り立っているかを力強く突きつけてきます。 歴史の奇妙な逸話と生物学を鮮やかに交差させる語り口は知的好奇心を刺激し、読み終える頃には、何気ない日差しが全く異なる意味を持って迫ってくるはずです。著者の個人的な情熱が宿った本書は、科学の光で世界を再定義する、驚異に満ちた知の冒険譚と言えるでしょう。