To rise to the increasingly urgent challenge of understanding the relationship between human beings and the environment, scholars need to step back and re-evaluate their basic premises about how current explanations should shape the form and content of their research. Against the Grain addresses a variety of topics in the field of human ecology, including ecological anthropology, evolutionary psychology, environmental history, and geography, and challenges scholars to re-think the adequacy of their methods and assumptions. Andrew P. Vayda concludes the volume with a critical commentary on these issues and, more widely, on the subject of explanation. The result is an extremely useful and provocative précis for thinking about, re-evaluating, and rectifying scholarly research. “Against the Grain provides an admirable survey of Vayda's career, shows some interesting extensions and applications of his ideas, and provides an elaborated critique of contrasting views in human ecology and ecological anthropology. I recommend this book to all who explore human environment relationships and those economic botanists who wish to explore why questions in their study of plant use.” ― Economic Botany “This is an excellent volume. Its strength lies in providing an intellectual history of an eminent anthropologist and a partial understanding of his influence on scholars and on anthropological theory, methodology, and practice over a considerable number of years.” ― Current Anthropology “. . . An excellent volume . . . Its strength lies in providing an intellectual history of an eminent anthropologist and a partial understanding of his influence on scholars and on anthropological theory, methodology, and practice over a considerable number of years.” ― Current Anthropology “The volume is a resource that is likely to be referenced frequently by researchers and individual chapters will provide excellent reading material for courses in ecological anthropology.” ― Human Ecology “In a world of enormous socio-environmental complexity, perhaps the most laudable intellectual position is one of rigorous humility. The works in this volume are compelling tributes to such an approach, providing sober, meticulous, and powerful explanations, all of which urge against over-simple generalization and a priori assumptions, which too often blur our understanding of the environmental changes around us. The Vayda tradition is alive and well, and we would all do well to heed its lessons.” ―Paul Robbins, University of Wisconsin–Madison “ Against the Grain provides an admirable survey of Vayda's career, shows some interesting extensions and applications of his ideas, and provides an elaborated critique of contrasting views in human ecology and ecological anthropology. I recommend this book to all who explore human environment relationships and those economic botanists who wish to explore "why" questions in their study of plant use.” ― Economic Botany Catherine Driscoll is Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney, Australia, and author of Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture and Cultural Theory (2002) and Modernist Cultural Studies (2010). Andrew Roberts is the author of Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West (which won the International Churchill Society Book Award) and A History of the English-Speaking Peoples since 1900 (which won the Intercollegiate Studies Institute Book Award). His other books include Napoleon and Wellington, Eminent Chuchillians and Salisbury, which won the Wolfson History Prize. His latest book, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War, won the British Army Military Book of the Year for 2010. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a PhD in History from Cambridge University.