The Elisha Kent Kane Papers and Logbooks include at least 50 heterogeneous notebooks, journals, and logs that may be loosely termed diaries and clustered into four main categories: Kane's arctic expeditions (containing six notebooks); his world travel (eight notebooks); his education, training, and medical practice (24 notebooks); and the various ship logs contained in the Kane Ship Log collection (12 notebooks). Although some of these records are difficult to interpret in isolation, when read together in these suggestive clusters, they will richly reward scholars interested in trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific travel, antebellum medicine, colonialism, and ethnography. Reference F. A. Parker's "Log of the U.S. Frigate Brandywine" (Kane Logbooks, No.7) and Samuel L. Breeze's "Journal of the U.S. Sloop of War Albany" (Kane Logbooks, No.8) for detailed illustrations of antebellum Rio de Janeiro, Macao, Hong Kong, Honolulu, Valparaiso, Veracruz, and the Yucatan.
 

The "Bedawin" diaries are contained in two typed volumes. In a prefatory note dated February 1919, Albert M. Lythgoe, founder of the department of Egyptian art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, justifies copying the journal to ensure that, "we might have on record in the Egyptian Department of the Museum the many facts which it contains relative to the archaeological work of Theodore M. Davis." He adds that the entries provide a "charming description" of "river-life on the 'Bedawin'" (February 1919).
 
In addition to recording the weather, travel, lodging, and sights, Andrews's entries also provide accounts of accidents (e.g. 1/5/1890, 5/4/1897, 1/26/1912), discoveries (1/27/00), and the education (2/3/1902, 1/14/1903), work (1/3/1893), diet (1/1/1890, 3/12/1893), attire (1/7/1890), diseases (12/12/1900), burial grounds (1/20/1890), and religion (2/28/1893) of the peoples who inhabit the Nile.
 
Not unsurprisingly, her entries evince her colonial sympathies. For example, she describes the salubrious effects of English officers of their Egyptian counterparts: "[the] influence of the English officers commanding [the army], was a potent engine for civilization and good" (1/24/1890). On passing some dead orange groves, she notes, "This is why Egyptians and Egypt will always need some intelligent domineering" (3/21/1899).
 
Despite those biases, Andrews is continuously charmed by her surroundings, lavishing lyrical descriptions upon Egyptian pyramids (12/14/1892), ruins (1/8/1890, 1/21/1890), hieroglyphics (2/2/1890), and the Nile (2/3/1900). Researchers interested in turn of the century Europe will also be rewarded with detailed accounts of Rome (3/21/1890, 4/19/93), Paris (5/23/1893), and London (6/8/1893).
 
For those seeking still more detail and context, visit the Emma B. Andrews Diary Project: http://www.emmabandrews.org/

While accompanying Theodore M. Davis on numerous archaeological trips to Egypt in the fin de siecle, Emma B. Andrews maintained a detailed diary between 1889-1913, which furnish researchers with cultural and archaeological insights into colonial Egypt and early-twentieth century Italy.
 
The "Bedawin" diaries are contained in two typed volumes. In a prefatory note dated February 1919, Albert M. Lythgoe, founder of the department of Egyptian art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, justifies copying the journal to ensure that, "we might have on record in the Egyptian Department of the Museum the many facts which it contains relative to the archaeological work of Theodore M. Davis." He adds that the entries provide a "charming description" of "river-life on the 'Bedawin'" (February 1919).
 
In addition to recording the weather, travel, lodging, and sights, Andrews's entries also provide accounts of accidents (e.g. 1/5/1890, 5/4/1897, 1/26/1912), discoveries (1/27/00), and the education (2/3/1902, 1/14/1903), work (1/3/1893), diet (1/1/1890, 3/12/1893), attire (1/7/1890), diseases (12/12/1900), burial grounds (1/20/1890), and religion (2/28/1893) of the peoples who inhabit the Nile.
 
Not unsurprisingly, her entries evince her colonial sympathies. For example, she describes the salubrious effects of English officers of their Egyptian counterparts: "[the] influence of the English officers commanding [the army], was a potent engine for civilization and good" (1/24/1890). On passing some dead orange groves, she notes, "This is why Egyptians and Egypt will always need some intelligent domineering" (3/21/1899).
 
Despite those biases, Andrews is continuously charmed by her surroundings, lavishing lyrical descriptions upon Egyptian pyramids (12/14/1892), ruins (1/8/1890, 1/21/1890), hieroglyphics (2/2/1890), and the Nile (2/3/1900). Researchers interested in turn of the century Europe will also be rewarded with detailed accounts of Rome (3/21/1890, 4/19/93), Paris (5/23/1893), and London (6/8/1893).
 
For those seeking still more detail and context, visit the Emma B. Andrews Diary Project: http://www.emmabandrews.org/

Haas opens her diary with an agenda to maintain a record of readings—and quotations pulled from those readings—as well as her own aspirations. In most entries, she responds to—and often argues with—arguments that she pulls from her diverse reading, which traverses Alcott, Balzac, Beowulf, the Bronte sisters, Dewey, Freud, Gorky, Hardy, Ibsen, Nietzsche, Thackeray, Tolstoy, and Voltaire.
 
For example, in one early entry, she takes Tolstoy to task, writing, "Some kinds of music may dull the mind, but I do not believe that all music dulls the mind. Besides, even music that dulls the mind has its place" (7/15/1928). Often, she uses those theories to rationalize her own artistic process: "Since I have studied psychology, I do not believe that artistic creation is a result of divine inspiration. My hypothesis is that these themes, which seem to be a result of divine inspiration, come in reality from my subconscious mind" (7/30/1928). Elsewhere, she advocates for limits of reason and value of emotions (e.g. 7/29/1928, 7/30/1928, and 11/25/1928).
 
While Haas largely abstains from discussing personal affairs in her correspondence, she includes several diary entries that chronicle her experiences with dating and romance (e.g. 12/2/1928 and 12/7/1930)
 
as one of her New Year's resolutions, she even adds the note: "Should not marry for at least three years" (12/1929). (Curiously, in that entry she also anticipates marrying three times.) Finally, although she mostly focuses on literature and music, Haas also includes several prescient notes on geopolitics, including the role of America in the world (e.g. 7/21/1928 and 8/2/1928) and the ebb of British colonialism (e.g. 8/7/1928).
 
Her diary concludes on 1/3/1931, with Haas enrolled at the University of Chicago, where, despite a full course roster, she plans a supplemental study regimen to guard against over-specialization: "I have planned a course of study for myself, which if carried out, will be more comprehensive than any university education could possibly be unless supplemented by wide reading."

In a diary that spans 1828-31, researchers receive an inside glimpse into Haas's early thinking about art, literature, dating and relationships, and even, to some degree, early-twentieth-century geopolitics. This diary ought to interest researchers interested in the arts, colonialism, psychology, and women's history.
 
Haas opens her diary with an agenda to maintain a record of readings—and quotations pulled from those readings—as well as her own aspirations. In most entries, she responds to—and often argues with—arguments that she pulls from her diverse reading, which traverses Alcott, Balzac, Beowulf, the Bronte sisters, Dewey, Freud, Gorky, Hardy, Ibsen, Nietzsche, Thackeray, Tolstoy, and Voltaire.
 
For example, in one early entry, she takes Tolstoy to task, writing, "Some kinds of music may dull the mind, but I do not believe that all music dulls the mind. Besides, even music that dulls the mind has its place" (7/15/1928). Often, she uses those theories to rationalize her own artistic process: "Since I have studied psychology, I do not believe that artistic creation is a result of divine inspiration. My hypothesis is that these themes, which seem to be a result of divine inspiration, come in reality from my subconscious mind" (7/30/1928). Elsewhere, she advocates for limits of reason and value of emotions (e.g. 7/29/1928, 7/30/1928, and 11/25/1928).
 
While Haas largely abstains from discussing personal affairs in her correspondence, she includes several diary entries that chronicle her experiences with dating and romance (e.g. 12/2/1928 and 12/7/1930)
 
as one of her New Year's resolutions, she even adds the note: "Should not marry for at least three years" (12/1929). (Curiously, in that entry she also anticipates marrying three times.) Finally, although she mostly focuses on literature and music, Haas also includes several prescient notes on geopolitics, including the role of America in the world (e.g. 7/21/1928 and 8/2/1928) and the ebb of British colonialism (e.g. 8/7/1928).
 
Her diary concludes on 1/3/1931, with Haas enrolled at the University of Chicago, where, despite a full course roster, she plans a supplemental study regimen to guard against over-specialization: "I have planned a course of study for myself, which if carried out, will be more comprehensive than any university education could possibly be unless supplemented by wide reading."

The Harlan journals recount two of three overseas voyages he took in his career. The first documents a trip to India that he made as a medical student in 1816-1817. This volume offers detailed accounts of the sea voyage (with some locational coordinates and accounts of weather) and accounts of Indian towns and cities, including Calcutta (3/9/1817). Alongside descriptions of Indian hospitals (e.g. 3/21/1817) and botanical gardens (3/23/1817), Harlan also writes at length about the indigenous peoples, including their shrines (4/10/1817), burial rights (6/17/1817), and what he considers their "lamentable" need for Christianity influence (4/11/1817). Harlan's accounts often feature an uncommon sense of voice, inflected with a deep colonialist bias. For example, in one of his later entries, he describes India as a place of fanaticism, war, and declension: "But India, once the seat of Literature and Science, hath at length dwindled into the most inordinate fanaticism, which binds the inhabitants in the grossest ignorance…since the year 1000, India has presented nothing but war and bloodshed. Her cities reduced to ashes, her fields laid waste by hosts of conquering armies, having been successfully overrun by the Mahomedan Princes" (6/17/1817).
 
Harlan's second journal finds him at the apogee of his career as a physician and scientist. Seeking to advance his scientific reputation among his peers, Harlan took a tour of Europe in 1833, extending his professional network of naturalists and medical researchers in the continent's cultural and economic capitals. In addition to visits to the northern European metropolises of Liverpool, London, Cambridge, Dublin, and Paris, he travels south to Bologna and even ascends Mount Vesuvius (9/26/1833). Notably, before he returns to New York, Harlan attends at least one meeting of the Phrenological Society in London (10/29/1833) and participates in a debate about U.S. slavery (6/21/1833), excerpted in Selected Quotations.

A pair of travel journals maintained by Richard Harlan, a prominent Philadelphia-based scientist and doctor, offer insights into India in the early-nineteenth century and European medicine in the antebellum period. The first journal (1816-17) recounts Harlan's went to India as ship's surgeon of the East India Company. Entries include Harlan's extensive reflections upon—and judgements of—indigenous peoples' customs, burial rights, and religious practices. The second volume (1833) documents a trip Harlan takes to Europe at the apex of his career. That journal offers a window in antebellum medical practices in Europe, including the field of phrenology and Harlan's justification for U.S. slavery. Both volumes are remarkable for their detail and sense of voice, and they will certainly interest scholars researching British colonialism in India, European medical science, and slavery in the antebellum United States.
 
The Harlan journals recount two of three overseas voyages he took in his career. The first documents a trip to India that he made as a medical student in 1816-1817. This volume offers detailed accounts of the sea voyage (with some locational coordinates and accounts of weather) and accounts of Indian towns and cities, including Calcutta (3/9/1817). Alongside descriptions of Indian hospitals (e.g. 3/21/1817) and botanical gardens (3/23/1817), Harlan also writes at length about the indigenous peoples, including their shrines (4/10/1817), burial rights (6/17/1817), and what he considers their "lamentable" need for Christianity influence (4/11/1817). Harlan's accounts often feature an uncommon sense of voice, inflected with a deep colonialist bias. For example, in one of his later entries, he describes India as a place of fanaticism, war, and declension: "But India, once the seat of Literature and Science, hath at length dwindled into the most inordinate fanaticism, which binds the inhabitants in the grossest ignorance…since the year 1000, India has presented nothing but war and bloodshed. Her cities reduced to ashes, her fields laid waste by hosts of conquering armies, having been successfully overrun by the Mahomedan Princes" (6/17/1817).
 
Harlan's second journal finds him at the apogee of his career as a physician and scientist. Seeking to advance his scientific reputation among his peers, Harlan took a tour of Europe in 1833, extending his professional network of naturalists and medical researchers in the continent's cultural and economic capitals. In addition to visits to the northern European metropolises of Liverpool, London, Cambridge, Dublin, and Paris, he travels south to Bologna and even ascends Mount Vesuvius (9/26/1833). Notably, before he returns to New York, Harlan attends at least one meeting of the Phrenological Society in London (10/29/1833) and participates in a debate about U.S. slavery (6/21/1833), excerpted in Selected Quotations.

The Bayard journal offers a detailed record of the first half of his tenure as American Commissioner of Claims in London. In that capacity, Bayard writes regularly about his correspondence with Secretary of State Timothy Pickering (5/29/1795, 11/1/1795, 11/2/1795), meetings with Vice President John Adams (11/13/1795, 1/22/1796), and various news to the French Revolution (e.g. 5/29/1795 and 5/31/1795), the Jay Treaty (8/8/1795), and warning signs of what would become the Panic of 1796-97 (6/26/1795, 7/14/1795). Notably, his notes concerning the financial panic underscore the interconnectedness of national markets. "Alarm prevails - some bad news from India," writes Bayard. "A great scarcity of money - India stocks fall…American stocks have fallen also in consequence of the scarcity of cash & the late news from the U.S." (5/25/1796).
 
What researchers might find most surprising, however, is how much of this volume strays from international law and diplomacy into the eighteenth-century arts and sciences. Bayard records a gallery opening at the Royal Academy (5/25/1795), attends a Methodist meeting (6/28/1795), goes to theater (9/24/1796), and visits numerous coffee houses in London, Bath, Bristol, and Oxford. In his travels, he meets a number of significant figures in the arts and sciences. He writes about a meeting with writer and collector William Henry Ireland, who shows him "a copy of one Shakespeare's manuscripts" (9/16/1795). The next year, that "new play," Vortigern and Rowena, would later be discovered to be a forgery, the subject of significant controversy. Towards the end of his volume, he also notes an encounter with astronomer William Herschel, who shows him his 40-foot telescope behind his house (6/13/1796).

Appointed by President Washington as American Commissioner of Claims to represent the United States in the British courts, Samuel Bayard appeared before the admiralty courts in London for four years, during which time he obtained more than ten million dollars in compensation for American interests. His journal, which accounts for the first half of his tenure (5/8/1795-12/31/1796), offers a window into international law at the turn of the nineteenth century, the French Revolution, the Panic of 1796-97, and the early national period in an international context. Alongside his work in international law, Bayard demonstrates a keen interest in the arts, especially literature, and at one point crosses paths with writer and collector William Henry Ireland.
 
The Bayard journal offers a detailed record of the first half of his tenure as American Commissioner of Claims in London. In that capacity, Bayard writes regularly about his correspondence with Secretary of State Timothy Pickering (5/29/1795, 11/1/1795, 11/2/1795), meetings with Vice President John Adams (11/13/1795, 1/22/1796), and various news to the French Revolution (e.g. 5/29/1795 and 5/31/1795), the Jay Treaty (8/8/1795), and warning signs of what would become the Panic of 1796-97 (6/26/1795, 7/14/1795). Notably, his notes concerning the financial panic underscore the interconnectedness of national markets. "Alarm prevails - some bad news from India," writes Bayard. "A great scarcity of money - India stocks fall…American stocks have fallen also in consequence of the scarcity of cash & the late news from the U.S." (5/25/1796).
 
What researchers might find most surprising, however, is how much of this volume strays from international law and diplomacy into the eighteenth-century arts and sciences. Bayard records a gallery opening at the Royal Academy (5/25/1795), attends a Methodist meeting (6/28/1795), goes to theater (9/24/1796), and visits numerous coffee houses in London, Bath, Bristol, and Oxford. In his travels, he meets a number of significant figures in the arts and sciences. He writes about a meeting with writer and collector William Henry Ireland, who shows him "a copy of one Shakespeare's manuscripts" (9/16/1795). The next year, that "new play," Vortigern and Rowena, would later be discovered to be a forgery, the subject of significant controversy. Towards the end of his volume, he also notes an encounter with astronomer William Herschel, who shows him his 40-foot telescope behind his house (6/13/1796).

The Heiser diaries are without peer when it comes to their scope--spanning the first seven decades of the twentieth-century--global reach, and detail. Scholars exploring the history of medicine might gravitate towards entries related to his public health work in the Philippines (1908-1916). Researchers interested in the history of zionism will be richly rewarded by volumes from 1922 and 1926--an excerpt from Heiser's July 1922 journey to Palestine is excerpted in Selected Quotations. And those interested in colonial India will discover a numerous reflections on Gandhi and 1920s non-violent resistance movements (also excerpted in Selected Quotations).
 
Perhaps most surprising are Heiser's detailed accounts of European travel between the 1920s and 1930s, during which he expresses some sympathy for nationalist movements. Traveling war-torn Italy, he remarked on there "appears to be unanimous agreement among natives and foreigners" that the new prime minister, Benito Mussolini, "has accomplished extraordinary results and that he is honest and genuinely patriotic" (11/19/1923). Several years later, he documents the nation's progress in developing infrastructure and improving services. He concludes his 4/29/1926 entry with an ominous justification for fascism: "Democracy gradually became so inefficient that all came to a standstill and a dictator was able to start the machinery on an effective basis."
 
Heiser traveled widely during the decade preceding World War II. In the late-1930s, he returned to Italy and decries the ubiquitous military presence, government propaganda, and oppressive taxation. And yet, he ends his entry with a section entitled "The Other Side." Heiser writes: "A whole new social order has been created. Instead of people finding fault with what government fails in, the press and government propaganda constantly drive into their ears what government is doing for the people. (In the end will this not produce more peace of mind and happiness than our democratic way of emphasizing fault-finding)" (4/25/1937).
 
On the topic of promoting public happiness, Heiser draws a similar conclusion during a contemporaneous visit to Germany. While he decries the Nazi government's "censorship, prohibitions and [intrusion into] one's private affairs," he adds: "And yet one begins to wonder whether there is not much to be said in favor of the good type of dictatorships, in promoting human happiness. In democracies people are [annoyed] to say or think little of the good things government does for them and to place main emphasis upon petty fault finding" (6/3/1937). Finally, just one year prior to the outbreak of World War II, Heiser pens perhaps his most generous account of dictatorships. That account, "Further Impressions Dictatorships," is excerpted in Selected Quotations.

By any measure, public health leader Victor George Heiser lived a long, productive, and vigorous life. His 86 diaries (1890-1972) predate the Spanish-American War and post-date U.S. escalation in Vietnam, while his career in public health put him in contact with politicians, diplomats, ambassadors, and government officials across the globe. An astute political observer, Heiser offers rich, on-the-ground insights into twentieth-century history as it unfolded, from the rise of Gandhi to the fall of Hitler. His 1920s and 1930s entries also offer candid explanations of and justifications for dictatorship. The Heiser diaries may interest a wide range of scholars, including those researching the history of science, American public health policy in the Philippines, the history of Zionism and Israeli statehood, colonialism in Asia (most especially India), and Europe between World War I and World War II.
 
The Heiser diaries are without peer when it comes to their scope--spanning the first seven decades of the twentieth-century--global reach, and detail. Scholars exploring the history of medicine might gravitate towards entries related to his public health work in the Philippines (1908-1916). Researchers interested in the history of zionism will be richly rewarded by volumes from 1922 and 1926--an excerpt from Heiser's July 1922 journey to Palestine is excerpted in Selected Quotations. And those interested in colonial India will discover a numerous reflections on Gandhi and 1920s non-violent resistance movements (also excerpted in Selected Quotations).
 
Perhaps most surprising are Heiser's detailed accounts of European travel between the 1920s and 1930s, during which he expresses some sympathy for nationalist movements. Traveling war-torn Italy, he remarked on there "appears to be unanimous agreement among natives and foreigners" that the new prime minister, Benito Mussolini, "has accomplished extraordinary results and that he is honest and genuinely patriotic" (11/19/1923). Several years later, he documents the nation's progress in developing infrastructure and improving services. He concludes his 4/29/1926 entry with an ominous justification for fascism: "Democracy gradually became so inefficient that all came to a standstill and a dictator was able to start the machinery on an effective basis."
 
Heiser traveled widely during the decade preceding World War II. In the late-1930s, he returned to Italy and decries the ubiquitous military presence, government propaganda, and oppressive taxation. And yet, he ends his entry with a section entitled "The Other Side." Heiser writes: "A whole new social order has been created. Instead of people finding fault with what government fails in, the press and government propaganda constantly drive into their ears what government is doing for the people. (In the end will this not produce more peace of mind and happiness than our democratic way of emphasizing fault-finding)" (4/25/1937).
 
On the topic of promoting public happiness, Heiser draws a similar conclusion during a contemporaneous visit to Germany. While he decries the Nazi government's "censorship, prohibitions and [intrusion into] one's private affairs," he adds: "And yet one begins to wonder whether there is not much to be said in favor of the good type of dictatorships, in promoting human happiness. In democracies people are [annoyed] to say or think little of the good things government does for them and to place main emphasis upon petty fault finding" (6/3/1937). Finally, just one year prior to the outbreak of World War II, Heiser pens perhaps his most generous account of dictatorships. That account, "Further Impressions Dictatorships," is excerpted in Selected Quotations.