杨振宁教授在出版他的两册《杨振宁论文选集（1945-1980）》和《杨振宁论文选集Ⅱ》中为选出的每篇文章都写了一篇后记。这些后记是极为重要的史料，本书这些文章的结集。这些文章对20世纪物理学历史有非常重要的价值；而且对于了解和研究杨振宁教授对物理学的贡献、他的科学思想、品位、风格，以及个人某些情感经历，也具有十分重要的意义。
各篇后记主要是追寻我个人作为一个物理学家的发展过程，同时清理一下我从当研究生以来的兴趣和想法。本书并不是我对自己研究工作的评价。科学家不希望对自己所有的论文作面面俱到的评价，但最懂得自己每一篇文章故事的，莫过于作者本人。——杨振宁
一方面，您对近代物理发展的历史，作了明晰有条理的简介；同时，您把最近的过去，心头不如意事也坦白地布开，使人读了非常感动。——吴健雄
他巧妙地将八十页后记结集一起放在书的开始部分，而不是附在各篇文章的后面。这样，后记可以连续地读，成了他的科学自传，一部极好的自传。它以清楚而简练的词句描述了他的一生，朴实地描述了他工作背后的强烈感情和始终不渝的忠诚。换言之，它描述了杨振宁之所以成为杨振宁。——弗里曼·戴森

A remarkable personal and professional chronicle by one of today's leading physicists, this is a collection of Chen Ning Yang's personally selected papers supplemented by his insightful commentaries. Including previously unpublished or hard-to-find works, this volume contains Yang's important papers on statistical physics, nuclear forces, and particle physics. Among them are his seminal work with T D Lee on the nonconservation of parity, for which they won the Nobel Prize, and his work with R L Mills, which led to modern gauge theories with their exciting prospects for the broad unification of field theories. The commentaries were written especially for this volume and provide a fascinating account of Yang's development as a physicist as well as a look at many important physicists of the 20th century. They trace the development of Yang's interests and ideas from his graduate school days to the present, showing how he worked with his colleagues and how their physics came into being. Together, the papers and commentaries in this unique collection comprise a powerful personal statement, shedding light on both the intellectual development of a great physicist and on the nature of scientific inquiry.