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.