The book focuses on four key issues in ideating the nation—territory, people, history, and emotions. It probes the question of how and why Jose Rizal and his fellow ilustrados conceptualized a nation with an unfamiliar yet delineated territory, identified an imagined emotional community, pinpointed a category of inhabitants of these islands as their ancestors with a respectable civilization, and situated the territory and the people in a linear timeframe that stretched back to the ancient past. In answering this complex question, the eight chapters of the book overturn common ideas about facets of Philippine history to reveal their complexity.

1. Rizal, Jose A., 1861-1896 ? Literary works. 2. Nationalism and historiography ? Philippines. 3. Philippines ? History ? Miscellanea.