With roughly 100 billion stars in the Milky Way alone, the cosmos is simply too vast for an unabridged tell-all. But here’s the next best thing: 100 stars—bright and faint, near and far, famous and obscure, long dead and as-yet unborn, red, yellow, blue, and white (but, as you’ll learn, never green)—handpicked by astronomer Florian Freistetter because they have the very best stories to tell:

GRB 080319B: the farthest we’ve seen into space with the naked eye
Gamma Draconis: the star that proved Earth rotates on its axis
V1364 CYGNI: pivotal in the discovery of dark matter
72 Tauri: definitive evidence for Einstein’s theory of relativity
V1: which revealed horizons beyond the Milky Way
Algol: called the Demon Star for its mysterious blinking—and many more!

Freistetter’s short, easy-to-read profiles not only invite you to gaze into the past and future of the universe, they introduce a stellar cast of scientists who came before: from Annie Jump Cannon, who revolutionized how we classify the stars, to Dorrit Hoffleit, who first counted them. Enjoy your journey through the cosmos. . . .