What is matter really made of? How did it escape annihilation in the heat of the Big Bang? And will we ever be able to understand the very first moments of our universe? A researcher on the Large Hadron Collider, Harry Cliff takes us to his extraordinary workplace beneath the French-Swiss border, then visits CERN's "Antimatter Factory." Along the way, Cliff illuminates the history of physics, chemistry, and astronomy that brought us to our present understanding—and misunderstandings—of the world, offering a front-row seat to one of the most dramatic intellectual journeys human beings have ever embarked on.