The Best Modern Physics History

The human side and the succession of events are often full of drama.
Emilio Segre, From X-Rays to Quarks, p. ix

By far and away the best book that I have read on the history of modern physics from the late 19th century to roughly the the end of the 20th century has to be From X-Rays To Quarks by Emilio Segre. What makes it so memorable is the natural gift of the author to tell a story, actually having been there at the historic moments and knowing a lot of the principals doesn't hurt either!

Emilio Segre - Manhattan Project ID

 It is just mind boggling to contemplate the insane amount of progress that has taken place in just my lifetime, but when you go back to the end of the 19th century and follow it through to the end of the 20th century and follow the flowering the modern physics through the stories and all the inter relations of events mundane and historical, more random than than a quantum soup of what we commonly refer to as life, it is all pretty momentous stuff.

This is the style of writing that will satisfy the general reader and the specialist, leaving both satisfied, which is a real hard feat to successfully pull off. The text is nicely illustrated and the quality of the printing is the excellent W. H. Freeman level. There is also included many personal photographs, most of which have never been published I am sure.
 

The best quality of the book is Segre's ability to wrap you up into the frenetic whirl of the explosion of the revolution of physics that has changed our world forever. Especially the individual stories of long labor and sacrifice that I found very well done. Such as the trials and tribulations of the Curie's and the development of radioactivity, which I found spellbinding.

If you are an interested and budding amateur astronomer or arm chair cosmologist, you will greatly enjoy this. It is sort of like a program at a baseball game...