Who Cares about Particle Physics?

Lewis Ryder, Contemporary Physics The author is good at explaining difficult notions, sometimes with surprising, even amusing everyday analogies - and there are no equations. This book is highly readable, copiously illustrated and attractively produced.

Times Higher Education A great general interest primer with a surprising and welcome feminist focus -- Most highly recommended

Brian Clegg, Popular Science I am giving this book four stars for its interesting insider content and particularly its insight into the way that the LHC is used that I have never seen elsewhere ... it's a book that's well worth reading if you have interest in this most fundamental of physical explorations.

Pauline Gravel, science writer, Le Devoir newspaper, Montreal Pauline Gagnon tells the wonderful scientific adventure of CERN that led to confirming the existence of the Higgs boson and that should bring a revolution in physics in elucidating big enigmas in the coming years such as the mystery of dark matter or the disappearance of antimatter.

Sean Carroll, author of The Particle at the End of the Universe Pauline Gagnon's book is a wonderfully detailed and comprehensive look at how scientists have pieced together our best understanding of the natural world, from accelerators to cosmology. If you want to know how particle physicists really work and think, this is a great place to start.

Catherine Perrin, host of Mdium Large on Radio-Canada I am fascinated. You should read it too; everybody can read it and understand it. Madame Gagnon has a knack for finding very efficient images to make us understand extremely complex phenomena.

Leonie Mueck, Senior Editor, Nature Pauline Gagnon is an inside-woman of the particle-physics world -- and this excellent book shows just that. The comprehensive account of where particle physics stands today is peppered by colourful metaphors that make even the most complex concepts accessible to everyone. On top of that, Gagnon gives the reader a glimpse into the inner workings of CERN and thoroughly describes how its huge international collaborations actually make new discoveries. This is a book that admirably delivers on the promise of taking the general reader seriously and a timely must-read if you want to get up to speed with Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider.

Robert Evans, former Reuter correspondent in Geneva During the two-year search for Higgs in the LHC, Dr. Gagnon's lively and insightful blog was a key source for those outside the physics community who needed to keep track of the process and have it explained in layperson' terms. Her excellent book will now be essential reading for those seeking to understand why the discovery was important, and what might come next from the LHC.

Pauline Gagnon was born in Quebec, Canada. After teaching physics for a few years in local colleges, she moved to California, where she completed a PhD in particle physics at University of California in Santa Cruz in 1993. She then started doing research at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics and is now a Senior Research Scientist at Indiana University. Since 2012, Pauline Gagnon has devoted all her time to popular science activities. In her own words, particle physics is too much fun to leave it only to physicists!

1: What is matter made of? 2: What about the Higgs boson? 3: Accelertors and detector, the essential tools 4: The discovery of the Higgs boson 5: The dark side of the Universe 6: Going beyond the Standard Model: calling SUSY to the rescue 7: What does fundamental research put on our plate? 8: CERN experiments: a unique management and cooperation model 9: Diversity in science 10: What could th next big discoveries be?