Nicole Meyer-Vernet is Research Director at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, and a senior scientist at the Observatoire de Paris. She received the 'E. Dechelle' de l'Academie des Sciences and has been involved with a number of spacecraft investigations of the earth's ionosphere, the solar wind, and cometary and planetary environments.

• Preface; 1. The wind from the sun: an introduction; 2. Toolkit for space plasma physics; 3. Anatomy of the sun; 4. The outer solar atmosphere; 5. How does the solar wind blow?; 6. Structure and perturbations; 7. Bodies in the wind: dust, asteroids, planets and comets; 8. The solar wind in the universe; Index.

Review of the hardback: 'The author has an easy style and a knack for clarity, picking out questions to answer and summarising key points without dull repetition. There are plenty of illustrations, including some excellent sketches and cartoons, and overviews of the types of images used … Nicole Meyer-Vernet has done an excellent job of starting at the very beginning of a complex topic and talking the reader through to an understanding of current research questions, with good humour and a sharp eye for inconsistencies.' Geoscientist