The Particle at the End of the Universe

This book has three parts: the search for the Higgs Boson, a description of the Large hadron Collider and what a particle physicist does. This book cries out for an editor - the author repeats himself endlessly. Still, some good physics explanations.

There is some fairly hard core (for the layperson) particle physics in this book but I think it's explained really well. I loved the book but I did spend a summer as an undergrad at CERN so YMMV. :)