Higgs Bosons, Electroweak Symmetry Breaking, and the Physics of the Large Hadron Collider

The Large Hadron Collider, a 7 + 7 TeV proton-proton collider under construction at CERN (the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva), will take experiments squarely into a new energy domain where mysteries of the electroweak interaction will be unveiled. What marks the 1-TeV scale as an important target? Why is understanding how the electroweak symmetry is hidden important to our conception of the world around us? What expectations do we have for the agent that hides the electroweak symmetry? Why do particle physicists anticipate a great harvest of discoveries within reach of the LHC?