By the time of his untimely death in 1983 Herman Kahn was recognized by both friends and intellectual adversaries as one of the worlds most creative and best minds. The current growing resurgence of interest in Kahns ideas and intellectual legacy demonstrates the enduring relevance of his work. Yet in spite of the constant influence of his arguments there is a shortage of books summarizing Kahns essential contributions and thus his work is not as well known as it should be. The Essential Herman Kahn is an attempt to cope with this predicament and offer the public for the first time an anthology consisting of the essence of Kahns work organized thematically. The two decades that have passed since his death allow us today to approach his work undisturbed by the sound and fury of the many public debates and controversies he participated in and to focus on some of the deepest and most enduring dimensions of his intellectual contributions. The anthology will try to bring together out of the several thousands pages published by Kahn during his life the essential Kahn the most relevant consequential and interesting themes ideas and arguments defining his legacy. As such it will met the needs of those who are interested in Kahns work but do not have the time and energy to access his outofprint books to make their way through the voluminous number of pages and then to sort out the essential from the accidental the perennial from the contextual.