Subtitle: A Field Guide to North American Barns & Other Farm Structures
Author: Allen G. Noble and Richard K. Cleek
Illustrations by: M. Margaret Geib
Subject: Americana/Travel
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-2172-6
Paperback ISBN 0-8135-2173-4
Pages: 222 pp.

"This is the most comprehensive guide available to American barns and farm structures and their general geographic locations. The illustrations, photographs, and concisely organized text will prove helpful to scholars as well as beginning barn enthusiasts."--Robert Ensminger, author of The Pennsylvania Barn: Its Origin, Evolution, and Distribution in North America

"Makes it easier for city slickers to recognize the difference between a corn crib and a chicken coop, a bank barn and a pole barn, a jack fence and a jacal fence . . . also alerts us to often-overlooked architectural features."--Country Living

"This field guide offers new understanding by careful classification of vernacular rural structures throughout America and Canada. . . . An excellent taxonomy of rural structures."--Choice

"Details barns, their peculiar construction methods, and architectural styles. They also include many maps showing where barns can be found across the North American continent."--Des Moines Register

"A landmark guide to its subject: it covers barns in North America from Louisiana to New England, and a variety of other farm structures as well--including corn cribs, silos, and outhouses."--The Record (Bergen, New Jersey)

"Reading this book is the next best thing to spending a weekend in an immense museum of American barns! It has no peer."--Greg Huber, editor, American Barn Journal

Barns give character to the countryside. Their structures reflect the ethnic heritage of a region's settlers and the nature of the land itself. With The Old Barn Book, you'll be able to spot the difference between a Dutch barn and a Swedish barn, a barn for cows and a barn for tobacco. You'll find out why some barns have hipped roofs and others gables, why some have doors at the end and others have them on the side, why some are wood and some are stone, why some are round. Whether you are nostalgic for farm life or like to drive out in the country or want to join in the barn preservation movement, you will find this book an indispensable guide.

Allen G. Noble is Professor of Geography at the University of Akron and author of Wood, Brick, and Stone: The North American Settlement Landscape. Richard K. Cleek is Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin Center.