The work explores the craft of the historian from a number of different angles and discusses what constitutes history and how it should be configured and created in literary form by the historian. The scope of the work is broad across space and time: in one chapter, for instance, he cites a number of examples of erroneous history-writing and forgeries, citing sources as wide-ranging as the Commentaries of Julius Caesar and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. His approach is one that is configured not for those who are necessarily professional historians themselves (members of what he referred to as 'the guild') but instead for all interested readers and non-specialists.

Bloch also expressed the viewpoint that the craft of the historian should not be a judgmental one that the historian should attempt to explain and describe rather than evaluate in normative terms. At one stage in the work, for instance, Bloch observes that the mania for making judgments is a satanic enemy of true history.