In the late spring of 1985 Simon Kuznets selected a set of his recent essays that he thought would make a useful book. He died (July 9, 1985) before he was able to arrange for their publication. We subsequently learned of his plans through Moses Abramovitz, read the manuscript, decided that the project should certainly be completed, and prevailed upon Professor Kuznets's widow, Edith, to allow us to bring the book out in this series. Two of Professor Kuznets's former students, Richard Easterlin and Robert Fogel, agreed to provide us with a Foreword and an Afterword, while Edith Kuznets took on the difficult task of editing Simon Kuznets's bibliography for the volume. We thank Professors Abramovitz, Easterlin, and Fogel, and particularly, Mrs. Kuznets for their cooperation.

Simon Kuznets was born in Russia in 1901 and came to the United States in 1922. He studied at Columbia with Wesley Mitchell, whose influence on him was profound. In 1926 he received the Ph.D. and shortly thereafter joined the National Bureau of Economic Research, where he met his future wife, Edith Handler. He was made director of the Bureau's national income project, in which capacity he designed the national accounts and supervised their construction. Subsequently he organized and carried out research on various aspects of economic change, most notably long swings (often called Kuznets cycles, in honor of his work on them), changes in the size distribution of income, and the processes of economic growth and economic development.