Our Diaries, Ourselves: How Diarists Chronicle Their Lives and Document Our World

Travel blogger Rubiner (Fun with the Family in Iowa) became a dedicated diary keeper in 1977, at age 14, and has since filled 82 volumes with her musings and observations. In this illuminating account, she explores, among other things, why people feel the need to keep diaries, how these private writings are useful for historians, and how this practice has evolved in the digital age. Among the diarists referenced are such famous figures as Samuel Pepys, Queen Victoria, Virginia Woolf, Anne Frank, and Taylor Swift. But the author also spotlights diaries by lesser known figures that led to fresh historical insights when read in later eras, such as women whose experiences and opinions couldn’t be made public, as well as various explorers, naturalists, homesteaders, factory workers, prisoners of war, and others whose diaries exposed suppressed truths. Along the way, the author tracks how material changes to the diary’s form have altered people’s relationship to diary-keeping—during the 1800s, ready-made diaries sent the practice mainstream, feeding into a general rise in literacy; during the internet era, diaries suddenly had an audience, leading to a shift in how diaries were addressed and to the rising popularity, Rubiner perceptively notes, of a “confessional culture” and new types of “ego media” like memoirs and podcasts. While the prose is a bit workmanlike, this bursts with insights that entertain. (Feb.)