DEAR DIARY: For lock-and-key diarists and restaurant conversation eavesdroppers alike, a not-so-secret history of the diary and the people who write—and read—them

We know what a king eats in a day, what the inner world of a young girl in hiding looks like, and what it was like to be a Freedom Rider because of diaries. Whether carved into stone, penned in a crudely bound parchment book, or spoken into a camera for viewers around the world, records of human love, loss, genius, and grocery lists have been kept for thousands of years.

Our Diaries, Ourselves pays homage to the time-honored tradition of chronicling one’s day, memories, and creativity. Longtime diarist and veteran journalist Betsy Rubiner invites the curious listener between the journal pages of beloved icons like Virginia Woolf and Taylor Swift. Rubiner tours Italy’s “City of the Diary,” Pieve Santo Stefano, which boasts a diary archive, museum, and annual festival. Through it all, she explores how diaries—whether kept by renowned figures or ordinary people—offer glimpses of life both vastly different and comfortingly similar to our own.

This book is a treasure trove of social history, feminist rebellion, and personal reflection on how keeping a diary shapes a person’s experience of the world. Our Diaries, Ourselves is a celebration of the obscure and the mundane and the ephemeral. It reminds us of a uniquely human need that transcends time, language, and technology: to see and be seen, to be heard and understood and remembered.