Memories of the PS and of LEP (J. Steinberger) -- The Cern Proton Synchrotron: 50 Years of reliable Operation and Continued Development (G. Plass) -- A Few Memories From the Days at LEP (E. Picasso) -- LEP Operation (S. Myers) -- Proton- Antiproton Colliders (C. Rubbia) -- Electron Colliders at CERN (B. Richter) --  The LHC Adventure (L. Evans) -- The Future of the CERN Accelerators Complex (R.-D. Heuer) -- Memories of the Events That Led to the Discovery of the Nu_Mu  (L. Ledermann) -- The Discovery of CP Violation (J. W. Cronin) -- Unification: Then and Now (S. Glashow) -- Peering Inside the Proton (J. Friedman) -- QCD : An Unfinished Symphony (F. Wilczek) -- The LHC and the Higgs Boson (M. Veltman) -- The Unique Beauty of the Subatomic Landscape (G. ‘t Hooft) -- QCD: Now and Then (D. Gross) -- Test of the Standard Model in Space: the AMS Experiment on the International Space Station (S. Ting) -- Changing Views of Symmetry (S. Weinberg).

This collection of lectures and essays by eminent researchers in the field, many of them nobel laureates, is an outgrow of a special event held at CERN in late 2009, coinciding with the start of LHC operations. Careful transcriptions of the lectures have been worked out, subsequently validated and edited by the lecturers themselves. This unique insight into the history of the field includes also some perspectives on modern developments and will benefit everyone working in the field, as well as historians of science.