本书围绕对十九世纪到当代的德国历史观和德国民族史学思想传统的讨论,追溯了德国自由主义的悲剧性历史,考察了使德国民族主义的反民主特征得以合法化的历史观。德国的历史研究绝非如德国历史学家们声称的那样科学和客观,而是受到了对德国民族性认同的深刻影响,这种“历史主义”虽不能说直接导向了纳粹主义,但在很重要的方面为1933年德国彻底抛弃民主制度和确立权威主义的恐怖统治扫清了道路。

作者在本书中考察了关于历史和历史学性质的思想的深刻变化，以及自 19世纪职业历史学出现以来作为其基础的基本原则的发展，描述了二战以后新的社会科学学科如何改变历史学，特别是近二十年来后现代主义思想对历史学的巨大挑战，并得出结论：当代的历史学正从经典的、宏观的形式走向微观史、文化史和日常生活史。本书是新版，增加了题为“21世纪初的回顾 ”的后记，考察了从后现代主义向新的社会科学方法的进展，特别注意文化因素和全球化问题。本书已被译成十种文字在多个国家出版。

So far histories of historiography have concentrated almost exclusively on the West. This is the first book to offer a history of modern historiography from a global perspective.
Tracing the transformation of historical writings over the past two and half centuries, the book portrays the transformation of historical writings under the affect of professionalization, which served as a model not only for Western but also for much of non-Western historical studies. At the same time it critically examines the reactions in post-modern and post-colonial thought to established conceptions of scientific historiography.
A main theme of the book is how historians in the non-Western world not only adopted or adapted Western ideas, but also explored different approaches rooted in their own cultures.