The Quest to Understand Human Affairs presents fifty previously unpublished essays by Vincent Ostrom on the U.S. Government's environmental problems and resource governance and span the six decades of Ostrom's career in political science and public administration. Including everything from a 1947 essay on Western (U.S) issues in national politics to ending with a 2004 manuscript on Constitutional foundations and federal institutional forms, these essays examine significant developments in administration, constitutional design, and the evolution of theory and practice in the field of institutional analysis and development during the second half of the twentieth century and first decade of the new millennium.