The rich and famous, the important and powerful, can always have their say. But what of the bulk of humanity who suffer the whims of history, whose everyday labors give it life? How will their voices be remembered? The answer, at least in Italy, can be found here in this small Tuscan town, which has become Italy's repository of lives recounted.

Some of those lives are hastily scribbled on scraps of paper. Others fill leather-bound journals with lazy longhand. Still others come tidily typewritten. They are among the thousands of diaries, letters, autobiographies and punctilious notes that line the shelves of the National Diary Archive Foundation, providing firsthand accounts of the lives of common people and how they witnessed the grand events that shaped the nation.

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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/