These 34 eyewitness accounts provide a unique entrance into the diversity of American society. Diaries and letters are the most reliable of firsthand sources, more so than memoirs that are long removed from the fresh experience of the past.

Marsha Markman and Susan Corey are professors in the English Department at California Lutheran University. The late Jonathan Boe was a professor in the History Department. The three have also jointly edited Writing Women's Lives; American Women's History through Letters and Diaries (1999).