Three hundred feet below the French-Swiss border, a doughnut-shaped tunnel seventeen miles around is the home of the Large Hadron Collider, whose purpose is to accelerate subatomic particles to the speed of light - and then smash them head-on into each other. Why anyone would want to do that and how that whole thing happened is the subject of this book. It's the story of an amazing machine - how it evolved from a simple tabletop experiment into the colossus it is, how it works, and the problems which have blocked it along the way. It's the story of the deep dive into the very fabric of the universe, to probe its mysteries and unlock its secrets. It's the story of the exciting science at the core of nature, and a technology which defies that very nature. And it's the story of the humanity which will shape its destiny, and whose destiny will in turn be shaped by it - the mother of all colliders.