Sharon Traweek is Professor of Anthropology at Rice University.

• Preface Acknowledgments Prologue: An Anthropologist Studies Physicists Touring the Site: Powerful Places in the Laboratory Inventing Machines That Discover Nature: Detectors at SLAC and KEK Pilgrim's Progress: Male Tales Told During a Life in Physics Ground States: Distinctions and the Ties That Bind Buying Time and Taking Space: Negotiations, Collaboration, and Change Epilogue: Knowledge and Passion Notes Index

Traweek gets inside the heads of physicists… She shows their similarities and difference, how their careers are shaped, how they interact with their colleagues, how they do physics and how their ideas about time and space shape their social structure. Traweek has produced a revealing and intimate look at this exclusive world and its mores.