Our own Sun—a source of awe, myth, and mystery for untold generations of sky-gazers—is just one of roughly two hundred billion trillion stars. Together, they’re a window into the profoundest questions in physics—overturning, again and again, how we understand light, matter, time, and existence itself. Florian Freistetter explains all this and more, in brief, easy-to-read profiles of the hundred most history-making stars, inviting readers to gaze into the past and future of the universe alongside a stellar cast of scientists— from Annie Jump Cannon, who revolutionized how we classify the stars, to Dorrit Hoffleit, who first counted them. Enjoy your journey through the cosmos . . . GRB 080319B , the farthest we’ve seen into space with the naked eye V1364 CYGNI , pivotal in the discovery of dark matter 72 Tauri , definitive evidence for Einstein’s theory of relativity Algol , called the Demon Star for its mysterious blinking—and many more! Publisher’s note: 100 Stars That Explain the Universe was previously published in hardcover as The Story of the Universe in 100 Stars.