The 21st century is a time of great change in particle physics. A new energy frontier re- cently opened up at the Large Hadron Collider （LHC） at CERN. It's a time of great excite- ment with the anticipation of unexpected outcomes. At the same time， the most widely used university-level texts on high-energy physics date back to the time leading up to the W and Z boson discoveries. Since then， the Standard Model of particle physics has been thoroughly explored at the Large Electron Positron （LEP） collider at CERN， the Tevatron at Fermilab， HERA at DESY and at two B-factories， KEKB and PEP-II. A decade of neutrino physics has brought an exciting new view on these elementary and light， but massive， particles. This text is an attempt to capture the modem understanding of particle physics in a snapshot of time leading up to the start-up of the LHC. I believe that the pause in the development of texts has been due in part to the anticipated discovery of the Higgs boson and the implications that the observed Higgs field properties will have in defining the high-energy unification of the fundamental interactions. However， it is difficult for a new generation of high-energy physics to prepare for the challenge of the LHC without having the perspective needed to look beyond the limitations of the current Standard Model.
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