The essays feature the range of narrative possibilities available to historians who have become self-critical about the pervasive use of unexamined master narratives: they show how limited that tradition can be compared with the diverse alternatives derived from, for example, gendered traditions of Latin American travel writers of the nineteenth century, Victorian women's historical writing, or the lively subaltern tradition in Indian social history.

Together they argue not for the abandonment of historical materialism or the elimination of all master narratives but for the reinvigoration of social history through the use of new and more persuasive arguments based on alternative narratives.