This volume contains essays Mostly About Bengal written by the author over a period of fifteen years:
1. The Regional Elites: A Theory of Modern Indian History
2. The Partition of Bengal: A Problem in British Administration, 1830-1912
3. A Plea for the Study of the Indian Provincial Legislatures
4. The Vote and the Transfer of Power: A Study of the Bengal General Election, 1912-1913
5. The Forgotten Majority: The Bengal Muslims and September 1918
6. The Non-Cooperation Decision of 1920: A Crisis in Bengal Politics
7. Four Lives: History as Biography
8. Gandhi: A Twentieth-century Anomaly?
9. The Social and Institutional Bases of Politics in Bengal, 1906-1947
10. Peasant Mobilization in Twentieth-century Bengal
11. The Rural Parvenu: A Report of Research in Progress

These articles were published in different journals outside India which were hard to get in India. The volume is being reprinted as many of the articles are classics and still referred to by South Asian scholars.