This chapter introduces the writer and thinker Aldous Huxley in general terms and situates him in the intellectual history of the twentieth century. Between the 1920s and 1960s, Huxley was a well-known figure as an important writer and intellectual, but today he is generally only connected with his dystopic novel Brave New World. This book aims to go far beyond this thin, meme-like legacy and reintroduce Huxley as one of the major intellectuals of the twentieth century, an important witness to the great historical, social, and political shifts of that century and one of its most original political thinkers. This introduction is meant to serve as the general frame of reference for and a guide to the following chapters.