The book's chapters focus on different ways of doing data analysis, not data collection, although the two are related in practice. The narrative material presented ranges from media accounts, life stories, and quantitative content analysis, to storytelling occasions, embodiment, emotionality, and narrative's diverse institutional settings. Chapter coverage is comprised of background information, a discussion of methods of analysis, and illustrations of how to interpret narratives.

The book is organized into three parts-analyzing stories, analyzing storytelling, and analyzing stories in society. It brings together a variety of orientations to both texts and narrative practice under one cover. The book is unique in its range of analytic and empirical vision. It will be useful to researchers and graduate students with traditional textual concerns and especially those who aim to incorporate developments crossing disciplinary borders and that address the analysis of narrative practice.