New space-based telescopes, along with a new generation of terrestrial instruments, capture both the fine surface detail and the vast eruptions of the corona with unprecedented clarity and for the first time take us right inside a living star.

From the Neolithic sky watchers of Europe to the solar observatories and blood sacrifice of Mesoamerica to the sun gods of the Egyptians and Greeks and the dawning of Aristotelian science, The Heart of the Sun reveals how the development of our whole cosmology has been informed by our struggle with this oldest of mysteries.