"On a drab Monday in 1882, B. H. Roberts, then laboring on a mission in Tennessee, confided to his journal: ""I am twenty-five years old today: perhaps one-half of my life has passed away-and what have I done? But little of anything, either of good or evil.... I have made attempts to accomplish something in various directions, but `miserable failure' is written across the face of each of them."" He detailed the shortcomings in his career, marriage, and church work. The irony for modern readers is what is known of his future accomplishments. In the half century left to him, he would play a preeminent role in Utah as a writer, historian, theologian, and politician. These diaries cover 1880-1898 when Roberts developed the skills that would characterize the rest of his career. Besides illuminating the man himself, they add to our knowledge of this pivotal time in history."