Offering insights into the diverse motives for keeping diaries, Snyder (Bancroft Library, U. of California, Berkeley), a diarist herself, introduces journals illustrated with drawings and photographs that provide insights into their writer's lives, dreams, and times. Well-known diarists featured include Mark Twain, John Muir, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Others are lesser-known authors, activists, adult and adolescent travelers in the 18th to 20st centuries, a deaf woman, and a Japanese-American relocation camp internee during World War II who wrote that: "In my journal, I am at ease." With beautifully-reproduced illustrations, the landscape-formatted volume includes information about the Bancroft Library, the co- publisher. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)