Greek historiography of the Classical and Hellenistic periods is mostly about the recent past, writers like Thucydides or Polybius writing about events in their own lifetimes. Drews here focused on those exceptions that wrote about the Near East and Egypt before the the Persian Wars.

This means in practice mostly Herodotus, whose Histories deal primarily with the rise of the Persian Empire and its subsequent humbling at the hands of the Greeks, but includes plentiful material on the older history of Egypt, Babylonia, and Lydia. Drews says that Herodotus included this partly because he thought it intrinsically noteworthy, partly because it showed how great the Persian Empire had been to conquer such places.

Other writers on the subject survive mostly in fragments and epitomes, although in Ctesias' case those are very substantial. Unfortunately for the modern historian, Ctesias' work turns out to have been about equal parts free invention and court gossip.

Having reviewed this material, Drews uses it as the basis of some arguments about the origin and goals of Greek historiography. I should probably refrain from having any strong opinions of it, not having read much in the way of contrary arguments. But the review itself I found quite interesting.