Why Mass? What Waves?

When I read "The First Three Minutes" back in the mid 80's I became a closet particle/astro- physicist on the spot. In those decades since, we have found evidence for Dark Energy and Dark Matter. Meanwhile, the behemoth String Theory has completely taken over physics leaving me a very unsatisfied observer. 10^500 variations of a mathematical formula do not do us or our universe justice. Do these brilliant scientists not know what they're doing? Can we take a peek at what lies below the layers of the universe we learned about in high school and college?

Where does mass come from? What (in the wave part of the particle/wave duality) exactly is doing the waving? This has bugged me for years.

Recently, I've read a series of books that taken together gave me a great understanding of modern physics  (Quantum Electrodynamics and Quantum Chromodynamics) without forcing me to learn any Calculus. They cover a broad range of topics and provide different views both as a scientific and historic perspective. The order in which I read them happened to work out perfectly for me, each felt like it built upon the one before. I'm assuming you've done your prior homework with Einstein's Special and General Relativity, read Feyman's work on QED and have absorbed some of QCD, or at least understand there are some pretty charts out there with quarks, leptons and force carriers.

1. The Comprehensible Cosmos: Where Do the Laws of Physics Come From? by Victor Stenger. I really like Stenger, his thoughts and writing are clear. In this book, he creates the laws of physics from first principles. Although some of the details can get a little deep at times, it is so well done, I have to say it's worth the effort to go through it.
2. The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning: Why the Universe Is Not Designed for Us by Victor Stenger. This book argues against the idea that the Universe seems to be designed and/or created for us. Look more closely and you will see the universe is not fine tuned. If you've read Martin Rees's book "Just Six Numbers", Stenger provides a good antidote to set you straight.
3. Neutrino by Frank Close. Wow! Ever wonder how to detect a particle that defies detection? Close provides both the historical discovery of the neutrino and the science behind it. I felt like I could see inside the sun.
4. Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality by Manjit Jumar. Another great combination historical and scientific read. We meet Rutherford, Shrodinger, Heisenberg, Bohn, Pauli and the other professors of physics.
5. The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces by Frank Wilczek. In one final swoop, Wilczek places a layer of physical reality just below QCD that for me explained almost everything. What makes mass? It's in there. What waves? In there. This book blew my mind, and I came away saying: "I get it."

I'll try to write up some more details about all this over the next few days.