American Barns: A Pictorial History
If you're tired of the suburban sameness that characterizes so much of the American landscape today, you'll find a walk throughAmerican Barns: A Pictorial Historywell worth the trip. This handsome coffee-table book not only presents barns as the ideal meeting of form and function, but also explores their distinct regional styles--from corncribs to hay barns to dairy barns to horse barns. Ninety-three color photographs accompanied by straightforward but informative text present a vision of rural America that can be, well, frustratingly hard to find--especially for those of us used to traveling by interstate, shopping at the mall, or living in cities or developments far removed from rural America. Here are the New England connecting barns, the Connecticut fieldstone barns, the round Shaker barns, the classic Vermont-red barns, the Southern tobacco barns, the Appalachian log barns, and the slope-roofed prairie barns. Seeing them all in one volume is enough to make you crave a slice of apple pie.--Kimberly Brown