Michael Downing, a self-proclaimed “devoted lifelong fan of late summer evenings,” is the author of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, reviewed this weekend by David Mehegan of the Boston Globe. According to Downing’s history, DST was adopted because of electricity scarcity during the wars and later implemented in the U.S. through local ordinances, like ones in New York and Chicago, in order to give workers more time for shopping and being outside. In an interview, Downing noted that the “idea of getting people to spend more time outside their houses just seems to me good social policy.”