Eric Sloane

I stumbled onto the work of Eric Sloane last year by accident. While putting together a new family reading time section for the website and catalog, I asked Debbie what books we didn't yet carry she thought would be good. One she suggested I look at was Sloane's Diary of an Early American Boy, which she uses when teaching American history. I read it, and was delighted; not lightweight at all, but a detailed look at farming life in 1800s Connecticut, with informative illustrations that were also works of art.

Why I didn't investigate Sloane further at that point I don't know, but I didn't, except to note that he had also written another book with an intriguing title, A Reverence for Wood. I bought a copy, but left it on the shelf unopened until recently. Finally I took it down, thinking I might learn a few things about uses for wood around the farm. Instead I entered another world, one inhabited by early American farmers, where wood had a critical and pervasive role in their lives. And I saw in this book that Eric Sloane not only had many gifts—as artist, teacher, historian, agrarian philosopher, storyteller, and champion of times past—but that he employed each gift to the fullest as he assembled his books. As we've found in reading through the rest of his writings, every book is rich and deep, worthy of study, yet also full of casual pleasures.

Eric Sloane was born in New York City in 1905, to a well-to-do family. He spent much time with his neighbor Frederic Goudy, a famous type designer, and learned sign-painting and hand lettering from him. At age fourteen he fell out with his family and began supporting himself as an itinerant sign-painter; his first trip, from New York City to Taos, New Mexico, is recounted in Return to Taos. Later he became a prolific painter of the Hudson River School, eventually creating 15,000 paintings, nearly one per day. A self-taught meteorologist, he wrote several books for the laymen about weather, and became the first television weatherman.

Most important, though, is that Sloane was among the foremost authorities on early American architecture, farm tools, and rural life in general. In this capacity he produced many books, some no longer in print, which record early American life in loving and careful detail. Although his books may initially appear to be light exercises in nostalgia, the reader quickly finds that they are deep and rich, filled with practical detail, and illustrated with care and love. These are books that can be either enjoyed casually or studied closely. They should form a key part of any library devoted to the simple life.

(To buy all nineteen books, choose The Complete Eric Sloane Collection.)

All of Eric Sloane's books are excellent, but we think these four are the best of the best. (To buy all four books, choose The Best of Eric Sloane.)

• Diary of an Early American Boy. On his fifteenth birthday in 1805, young Noah Blake's parents gave him a little leatherbound diary in which he recorded the various activities on his father's farm. The text of that early nineteenth-century book, together with additional text and many illustrations by Eric Sloane, provides today's readers with a charming rarity—a view of bygone days through the eyes of a young boy.
• A Reverence For Wood. Although the Diary is Sloane's best-known book, many think this one is his best. Wood is God's great gift to the agrarian, pleasing to the senses and useful in endless ways, chronicled here by Sloane in loving detail.
• Return to Taos. In his life Sloane made two extended trips from New York to Taos, New Mexico, one as a very young man in 1925, and one in 1960 which retraced his earlier steps. A fascinating glimpse of life as it was in the early 20th century, together with a melancholy consideration of how much thing changed for the worse in just thirty-five years.
• The Cracker Barrel. For awhile in the 1950s Sloane wrote and illustrated a very popular newspaper column, generally focusing on some aspect of Americana, liberally peppered with laugh-out-loud personal anecdotes.

Some of Eric Sloane's most valuable books for agrarians are the ones that describe in loving detail what life was like in early America. They are stuffed full of folklore and practical knowledge, and the illustrations are instructive as well as beautiful. (To buy all five books, choose the Eric Sloane Americana Collection.)

• A Museum of Early American Tools. Detailed descriptions and illustrations of how farm tools and kitchen implements were used and made. Includes devices used by curriers, wheelwrights, coopers, blacksmiths, loggers, tanners, coachmakers, and other craftsmen of the pre-industrial age.
• ABCs of Early Americana. A collection of American firsts—from the saltbox house to basketball, hex signs to ear trumpets, popcorn to rocking chairs—organized in an ABC format.
• The Seasons of America Past. From "sugaring time," spring plowing, and June weddings, to strawberry picking, weeding season, the fall harvest, and cider making, Eric Sloane recounts the yearly cycle of seasons and how it shaped early American life.
• Once Upon a Time. One of Sloane's last books, and in some ways his grumpiest (but not very), in this one he celebrates the character traits that served early Americans well: love of freedom, respect for the individual, sensible frugality, determined self-reliance, and love of God.
• American Yesterday. Here Sloane explores the unique careers of dowsers, tithingmen, sawyers, nailers, plumbum-men (plumbers), barber-surgeons, sellmongers, fence-viewers, and other old-time artisans and craftworkers, illustrating the activities, customs, and things created by the people who made their living in "antique ways."

Sloane was an acknowledged expert on early American architecture, and he worked hard to capture the traditional knowledge behind it both in words and in pictures. These books provide endless pleasure, rich and detailed, serving both as works of art to enjoy and as reference works on construction techniques and architectural design. (To buy all five books, choose the Eric Sloane Early American Architecture Collection.)

• Recollections in Black and White. A collection of Sloane's favorite pen-and-ink drawings made on his travels, together with reminiscences of the times and events portrayed.
• American Barns and Covered Bridges. Sloane's beautiful line drawings depict Maine barns attached to houses, sturdy Pennsylvania barns made of fieldstone, broad-shouldered western barns, open-sided tobacco barns from Virginia and North Carolina—even an unusual circular barn. A wide range of covered bridges are also illustrated, from fancy to simple, from tiny to almost half a mile long.
• An Age of Barns. Covering all types of American and Canadian barns and everything associated with them—implements and tools, hex signs, silos, out buildings, hinges, barn raising, and more.
• Our Vanishing Landscape. The narrative describes networks of canals, corduroy roads, and turnpikes; tollgates, waterwheels, and icehouses; country inns and churches; ingenious and colorful road signs; and massive snow-rollers that packed snow into hard surfaces for great sleds. Here also are engrossing accounts of toll-road owners, sign painters, circus folk, and other entertainers of the period.
• The Little Red Schoolhouse. Coming in June 2007.

Eric Sloane was a close student of the weather, both predicting it and depicting it. His books on the subject are well suited for use in a homeschool curriculum. (To buy all five books, choose the Eric Sloane Weather Collection.)

• Weather Book. In simple language, Eric Sloane explains the whys and wherefores of weather and weather forecasting, with the usual instructive and beautiful illustrations.
• Look at the Sky. The story of a large body of air as it passes over America, telling of its encounters with other weather systems and its effects on Americans from a wide variety of background—including a bush pilot in Canada and a Great Plains weatherman, as well as a sign painter in the Midwest and a New England sailor.
• Book of Storms. What triggers a tornado? What can you see in the eye of a hurricane? What's the difference between a thunderbolt and a thunderclap? Eric Sloane tells you.
• Weather Almanac. Combining two books, this is a volume chock full of traditional weather sayings and beliefs, including forecasting tips such as which winds bring what kinds of weather, how to “read” clouds, how to foretell the weather by the moon, and more.
• Skies and the Artist. Eric Sloane always claimed that "drawing clouds and sky is an important part of art study," pointing out that nearly every every great picture features sky space. Here he sets out to help art students master the art of painting the heavens.