School days, like our everydays, have changed. But the obsolete world of the one-room schoolhouse filled with rough-hewn desks still lingers. The echoes of yesteryear live on in the old-fashioned classrooms that still stand today. Harkening back to a time when the three Rs actually stood for reading, 'riting, and religion, Eric Sloane's sketchbook explores the history and spirit of early American schools. In this vivid slice of Americana, he tells...

"Here in text and pictures are the great barns these men, equipped with nothing more than a straight-edge, a compass, a square, and a good sound logic, built in New England, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the West. They reflected an agrarian era but were new in material and execution -- bigger, like the American dream, than any of their predecessors. Many of them stand today, sturdy and weather-cured and in beautiful proportion, for in building for soundness...