Anyone wishing to know what has been written on the Pennsylvania Germans will welcome the reappearance of this classic bibliography. Anyone aspiring to a command of the literature on the Pennsylvania Germans must master its contents; and anyone doing research in Pennsylvania-German genealogy must have it at his side. It is basic, and no efficient research can be done without it. Divided into subject categories, the bibliography contains citations to all published writings dealing with the Germans in colonial North America (chiefly Pennsylvania), whether in the form of general histories, magazine articles, newspapers, pamphlets, mug-books, church records, town, county, and state histories, or printed genealogies, and it attempts to give as complete an account of the printed source material as possible. It is in effect the starting point in Pennsylvania-German research because it acquaints the researcher with everything that had been published up through the cut-off year of 1933.

Information pertaining to each settler consists, generally, of name, age, occupation, place of origin, names of spouse, children and other family members, dates of embarkation and arrival, place of settlement, and date of death. In addition, some of the more notorious aspects of the settlers' lives are recounted in brief, telltale sketches.

Records are drawn from the marriage and death columns of newspapers published prior to 1835 in the counties of Clinton, Essex, Saratoga, Rensselaer, Albany, Columbia and "Old Dutchess", which latter, prior to 1812, included the territory of present-day Putnam.