In a routine review, Kandel's own sentence, "The accelerated progress in cell biology during the past ten years has led to concepts and methods that have made it possible to analyze behavior in a more fundamental way than previously," could have been used as a convenient opening phrase. Cellular Basis of Behavior, however, is more than its subtitle, An Introduction to Behavioral Neurobiology, suggests and also more than a text "usable by undergraduate and graduate students—even those having little background in behavior, neurobiology or invertebrate zoology,... an overview... for scientists in other fields" would need to be. It is a carefully formulated personal statement about an area whose landscape still reveals cracks and craters, traces of the violent action that has shaped it for decades. An investigator dedicated to the study of behavior is still embattled on many fronts, each of them demanding different strategies and tactics for action, defense