War on Record is one of the most interest books on the archive that I have read in a long time. Sternhell tells the story of the an archive composed of official records created during the Civil War and collected by the Federal Government in the aftermath.

She wants to know how the archival processes shape what we recognise today as Civil War history. Sternhell claims that she is unearthing the forces that shaped Washington's Civil War archive and learning how the archival records figured in the fraught reality of postbellum era. She reconstructed the process through the records that created tools of war. How Civil War history is shaped by the archive, and the demonstrated extend to which archival labour is rooted in cultural contexts.

There is very little literature on how non-archivists chose to record documents. Scholars have and do contemplate these problems. This particular archive, and others, have never been studied as rigorously as it deserves. She investigates the decision-making process that shaped the compilation: the personal, political, and institutional.

Historians, including Sternhell, agree that archives are deceptive. They are unstable, constructed, and susceptible to influences. Archival records are not static objects. Archives do not simply reflect the past but they shape the present and the future.

Sternhell says "Historians like to think of themselves as the original interpreters of archival records. Yet long before they set foot in the reading room, the records they will be working with had been interpreted in ways they do not understand and cannot escape."

Sternhell conducts her study by 'reading along the grain.' She focuses on the people who managed the records while also studying archival users.