Responding to the question, "What can a multi-genre approach to historiography contribute to political inquiry?", the textual itineraries in the book's chapters juxtapose macropolitical narratives -- official geopolitical, state-sponsored history -- with the micropolitical expressions of those who have been subjected to a continuum running from neglect, through dispossession, to genocide. With a focus on artistic media, which turn abstractions into personal and interpersonal dramas, composed with attention to the diversity and potency of objects of experience, the politically attuned historiographies analysed in Shapiro's investigations span literature, film, painting, music, gardening, architecture, and comic books.
The Politics of Historiography explores diverse historiographic inquiries: from analysis of Christopher Nolan's film
Oppenheimer to sonic strategies in books and films, to a combination of media genres that treat oceans, gardens, architecture, and graphic novels (as well as other visual media). The inquiry ends with a coda that focuses on the issue of witnessing, specifically examining the resurgence of racism inherent in official and popular anti-immigration positions, the growing possibility of nuclear annihilation, and the historiographic issue of historical "proof".
