Gauge fields and strong interactions

These three lectures deal with several aspects of the Yang-Mills quark gluon theory of strong interactions. An overview is followed by a plunge into the physics of electron positron annihilation into hadrons. Looming large in this discussion are the newly discovered, long-lived mesons. The role of these new heavy hadrons in the quark gluon model is examined. It is suggested that they are heavy quark antiquark bound states and that their properties could provide a rather clear and simple experimental handle on the underlying field theory