Historiography, as this book defines it, is the critical study of how historians go about reconstructing past events, as opposed to the statements they end up making. The term also names the history of history itself, and the shifting interpretations of any particular subject; it is the first, most general sense that is pursued here.

The starting point is that in most languages one word covers both what happened and the accounts we give of it. A library's history shelves hold books about the past rather than the past itself, and frequently books that tell incompatible stories about the same events.

From there the book surveys historical thinking from the earliest surviving narratives of Greece and China to the twenty-first century, closes with present-day debates and the new media reshaping how research is circulated, and adds a chapter on the training and career paths open to those who decide to make a profession of it.