These essays celebrate the achievements of Rudolf Klein, an exemplary colleague in the study of politics and policy, especially of health and health services. Rudolf Klein"s work continues to defeat conventional labels after more than four decades of prolific publication. He is a historian, a journalist, a political scientist, a policy analyst, a social scientist, an academic, and an advisor to public bodies. But none of these labels, or even all of them together, accurately describes this intensely detached and warmly impersonal practical intellectual purist whose sixty-fifth birthday offered this occasion for flattery and emulation.