In the evaluation of Michael Loewe, "The Lü shih ch'un ch'iu is unique among early works in that it is well organized and comprehensive, containing extensive passages on such subjects as music and agriculture, unknown elsewhere."

In order to establish Qin as the intellectual center of China, Lü "recruited scholars, treating them generously so that his retainers came to number three thousand".

[5] In 239 BC, he, in the words of the Shiji:[6] ... ordered that his retainers write down all that they had learned and assemble their theses into a work consisting of eight "Examinations", six "Discourses", and twelve "Almanacs", totaling more than 200,000 words.According to the Shiji, Lü exhibited the completed text at the city gate of Xianyang, capital of Qin, and above it a notice offering a thousand measures of gold to any traveling scholar who could add or subtract even a single word.

Although this text is frequently characterized as "syncretic", "eclectic", or "miscellaneous", it was a cohesive summary of contemporary philosophical thought, including Legalism, Confucianism, Mohism, and Daoism.

The composition's features, measure of completeness (i.e. the veracity of the Shiji account) and possible corruption of the original Annals have been subjects of scholarly attention.