Threshold Resummation of Soft Gluons in Hadronic Reactions -- An Introduction

I discuss the motivation for resummation of the effects of initial-state soft gluon radiation, to all orders in the strong coupling strength, for processes in which the near-threshold region in the partonic subenergy is important. I summarize the method of "perturbative resummation" and its application to the calculation of the total cross section for top quark production at hadron colliders. Comments are included on the differences between the treatment of subleading logarithmic terms in this method and in other approaches.