Empire of the stars is an ambitious, wide-ranging, and significant undertaking. Its author, Arthur Miller, is a distinguished historian of science who, as the cover blurb indicates, "has written extensively on 19th and 20th century science and technology, cognitive science, scientific creativity, and the relationship between art and science". The book attempts to relate the history of the unravelling of the constitution of stellar objects, of the way energy is produced in them, and the history of trying to make sense of their evolution, i.e. of their life history: their genesis and ultimate fate. It does so by focusing on particular individuals, particular settings, and particular events that were deeply influential in determining the path taken by that history.
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