Following in the footsteps of Darwin and Captain Cook, Steve Jones in his latest book takes us on a journey through the world of coral – which tells us some startling things about genes, cloning, and cancer, not to speak of the past, present and future of our planet. Most of all, though, life on the reef affirms the truth of evolution: that we emerged not from the vivid imagination of a beneficent designer but from the blind, random and apparently cruel action of natural selection which acts on humans as much as it does on every other creature, above and below the waves.