Rothert's coverage, which focuses on the ante-bellum period, boasts of over 200 photographs and ranges over such topics as John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg (for whom the county was named), the intrepid first-comers, county boundaries and boundary changes, courts and courthouses, life in the olden days, old houses and other county landmarks, education in Muhlenberg County, Muhlenberg in the Civil War, slavery, local writers and the local press, the tobacco and coal industries, and much more. Genealogists will appreciate the various lists of county inhabitants which dot the work, such as Muhlenberg men in the War of 1812, as well as the discussions of county pioneers like Jesse McPherson, Jonathan Hunt, Henry Rhoads, James Weir, Edward Rumsey, Charles Wing Fox, and Simon Bolivar Buckner, and their families, which are integrated into the historical narrative.