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Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics

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Are you by any chance a physicist or physics student? If so, you might want to take some time off from your studies and go over this history of high energy physics since World War 2. It is a nifty and elegant account of the field. Just to be clear about something - Despite "Quarks" in the title, the narrative does not begin at the suggestion of quarks by Gell Mann and Zweig. I think the author chose that because quarks are a very catchy and recognisable label; recognisable to many outside physics. The quark model first came about in 64.

But before that, the first section of the book talks about the struggle to reconcile Dirac's relativistic quantum mechanics with the experimental results coming out of the particle accelerators in the 50s. From this arose the seminal Feynman diagrams, ably assisted by Dyson and his propagator.

While the author apparently does not have a formal background in physics, the account is well done, in terms of its descriptions of the physical advances, and of giving proper attribution to those who made the advances.