It was first published on November 16, 1995, through Oxford University Press and is both an introduction to comparative poetics and an investigation of the myths about dragon-slayers found in different times and in different Indo-European languages.

[1] Watkins received a 1998 Goodwin Award of Merit from the American Philological Association (now the Society for Classical Studies) for his work on the book.

Watkins uses the comparative method to find cognate formulas and mythological features that could be traced back to a common past in ancient texts written in Indo-European languages.

He claims that it is not possible to understand fully the traditional elements in an early Indo-European poetic text without the background of what he calls a "genetic intertextuality" of particular formulas and themes in all languages of the family.

[7] Journal of the American Oriental Society also praised the book, which they viewed as "a fundamentum which must henceforth serve as the starting point and inspiration for a discipline whose future is now secure.