Discusses diarists such as Samuel Cole Davis, Charles Osborn, Lewis and Clark, Zebulon Pike, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, John Charles Fremont, Margaret Van Horn Dwight Bell, Francis Parkman, Washington Irving, John J. Audubon, James Gallatin, James K. Polk, Philip Hone, John Quincy Adams, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Amos Bronson Alcott.