Unprecedented gas prices, heat waves and droughts, climate change, Solyndra - all make "alternative" sources of energy contemporary areas of activism, controversy, lobbying and legislation. Yet few know that the ancient Chinese, Greeks and Romans used solar energy in their architecture, that Galileo and da Vinci both planned uses for the power of the sun, and that by 1918, there were more than 4,000 solar water heaters in California. The history of solar architecture and energy technologies gives readers an epiphany-producing sense of its future. Detailing a realistic alternative to fossil fuels, in illustrations the New York Times called "especially fine" and prose Library Journal termed "highly readable," Let It Shine shows that there is nothing - and plenty - new under the sun.
