The Challenge of Anthropology is a companion volume to Robin Fox's highly successful Encounter with Anthropology. Fox illustrates how anthropology must constantly learn from the natural and behavioral sciences. The Challenge of Anthropology takes the author's own work as a barometer of the state of the discipline, and shows the range of possibilities anthropology offers.

Fox covers a vast array of topics: the psychobiology of aggression; war and ideology; Frazer and Virgil; social complexity; kinship and marriage; prejudice and cognition; mythology; and Marxism, among others.