Minireview: A slim and somewhat sketchy popular introduction to the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. While Oerter emphasizes that this is not a history, logical development often leads him to follow a roughly historical route, making the book suffer in comparison to Crease and Mann's excellent history, The Second Creation. This work also seems to be pitched at a somewhat lower level than Crease and Mann, though it does address some issues they gloss over (and vice versa). The strangest omission I noticed was the lack of mention of the electroweak hierarchy problem (the cosmological hierarchy problem is brought up briefly). While primarily an aesthetic 'problem', this is one of the main motivations for developing theories beyond the Standard Model. This leads to supersymmetry being introduced just "because-it's-there" (260), then justified through the possibility of coupling constant unification in supersymmetric grand unified theories. ( )

Quite simply and readably written.