Scrapbooks is critically acclaimed and was named the best visual book by The New York Times in 2008. In writing this book, Helfand set out to learn about the widespread hobby of scrapbooking, how it got started, how it has evolved, and why people keep visual diaries of their lives. She collected hundreds of scrapbooks that range in time from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. She learned so much more than she expected and remarks, "To spend any time at all with these scrapbooks is to fall a little bit in love with the people who created them. They remind us who we are, where we’re going – and perhaps why, in the end, it might actually matter.”