'Eating the Sun' is the story of the discovery of a miracle: the source of life itself. From the intricacies of its molecular processes to the beauty of the nature that it supports, 'Eating the Sun' is a wondering tribute to the extraordinary process that has allowed plants to power the earth for billions of years. Photosynthesis is the most mundane of miracles. It surrounds us in our gardens and parks and countryside; even our cityscapes are shot through with trees. It makes nature green – the signature of the pigments with which plants harvest the sun; wherever nature offers us greenery, the molecular machinery of photosynthesis is making oxygen, energy and organic matter from the raw material of sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. We rarely give the green machinery that brings about this transformation much thought, and few of us understand its beautifully honed mechanisms. But we are dimly aware that those photosynthetic mechanisms are the basis of our lives twice over: the...