SOURCE: Cole, William. “Lighter-Than-Air Craft.” Saturday Review 10 (November-December 1984): 90.

In the following excerpt, Cole argues that Mallon's study of diarists throughout history in A Book of One's Own is a “book cried out to be written.”

This book cried out to be written, and the call was answered by Thomas Mallon in A Book of One's Own: People and Their Diaries. For him, the word “diary” embraces journals, day-books, commonplace books and, in some cases, writers' notebooks. Of the diarists quoted, Pepys is tops. He was quite a terrible fellow, groping the servant girls, mean to his wife, licking the boots of his superiors. But, in his copious diary, he really dove in and showed the steaming London life of the 1660s. He embodied the total diarist, giving the trivia of daily life as well as first-hand accounts of the great events. Also represented are the rambunctious Boswell; the...