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American Yesterday
A compilation of engrossing facts and anecdotes vitalized by author Eric Sloane's own pen, this book captures the living legacy of America as seen in "the things that were." According to Sloane, American Yesterday explores "our national attic of vanishing ways and obsolete occupations." Impressed by the artistry and sturdy realism of pioneer builders, he takes genuine delight in exploring the unique careers of barber-surgeons, dowsers, tithingmen, sawyers, nailers, plumbum-men, and a great variety of artisans, illustrating the activities, customs, and things created by the people who made their living in "antique ways."
Sloane, a devoted student of early Americana, speaks lovingly of the people who spent much of their lives creating wardrobe closets, foot stoves, church pew armrests, grindstones, featherbed patter paddles, charcoal burners, English phaetons, giant hogsheads, drovers' sleighs, windowsill sundials, and other items of long ago.
Credited with "doing gallant service, preserving records of the ways and the means of the forefathers who got along well with the resources now long forgotten" ( Springfield Republican ), Eric Sloane has written an immensely enjoyable book that will enchant anyone who takes pleasure in reading about the past and views its artifacts as part of a rich national heritage.
Sloane, a devoted student of early Americana, speaks lovingly of the people who spent much of their lives creating wardrobe closets, foot stoves, church pew armrests, grindstones, featherbed patter paddles, charcoal burners, English phaetons, giant hogsheads, drovers' sleighs, windowsill sundials, and other items of long ago.
Credited with "doing gallant service, preserving records of the ways and the means of the forefathers who got along well with the resources now long forgotten" ( Springfield Republican ), Eric Sloane has written an immensely enjoyable book that will enchant anyone who takes pleasure in reading about the past and views its artifacts as part of a rich national heritage.
128 pages, Paperback
First published May 7, 2003
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About the author
Eric Sloane
100 books58 followersEric Sloane (born Everard Jean Hinrichs) was an American landscape painter and author of illustrated works of cultural history and folklore. He is considered a member of the Hudson River School of painting.
Eric Sloane was born in New York City. As a child, he was a neighbor of noted sign painter and type designer Frederick W. Goudy. Sloane studied art and lettering with Goudy. While he attended the Art Students League of New York City, he changed his name because George Luks and John French Sloan suggested that young students should paint under an assumed name so that early inferior works would not be attached to them. He took the name Eric from the middle letters of America and Sloane from his mentor's name.
In the summer of 1925, Sloane ran away from home, working his way across the country as a sign painter, creating advertisements for everything from Red Man Tobacco to Bull Durham. Unique hand calligraphy and lettering became a characteristic of his illustrated books.
Sloane eventually returned to New York and settled in Connecticut, where he began painting rustic landscapes in the tradition of the Hudson River School. In the 1950s, he began spending part of the year in Taos, New Mexico, where he painted western landscapes and particularly luminous depictions of the desert sky. In his career as a painter, he produced over 15,000 works. His fascination with the sky and weather led to commissions to paint works for the U.S. Air Force and the production of a number of illustrated works on meteorology and weather forecasting. Sloane is even credited with creating the first televised weather reporting network, by arranging for local farmers to call in reports to a New England broadcasting station.
Sloane also had a great interest in New England folk culture, Colonial daily life, and Americana. He wrote and illustrated scores of Colonial era books on tools, architecture, farming techniques, folklore, and rural wisdom. Every book included detailed illustrations, hand lettered titles, and his characteristic folksy wit and observations. He developed an impressive collection of historic tools which became the nucleus of the collection in the Sloane-Stanley Tool Museum in Kent, Connecticut.
Sloane died in New York in 1985, while walking down the street to a luncheon held in his honor.
Sloane's best known books are A Reverence for Wood, which examines the history and tools of woodworking, as well as the philosophy of the woodworker; The Cracker Barrel, which is a compendium of folk wit and wisdom; and Diary of an Early American Boy: Noah Blake-1805, based on a diary he discovered at a local library book sale. His most famous painted work is probably the skyscape mural, Earth Flight Environment, which is still on display in the Independence Avenue Lobby in the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum.
Eric Sloane was born in New York City. As a child, he was a neighbor of noted sign painter and type designer Frederick W. Goudy. Sloane studied art and lettering with Goudy. While he attended the Art Students League of New York City, he changed his name because George Luks and John French Sloan suggested that young students should paint under an assumed name so that early inferior works would not be attached to them. He took the name Eric from the middle letters of America and Sloane from his mentor's name.
In the summer of 1925, Sloane ran away from home, working his way across the country as a sign painter, creating advertisements for everything from Red Man Tobacco to Bull Durham. Unique hand calligraphy and lettering became a characteristic of his illustrated books.
Sloane eventually returned to New York and settled in Connecticut, where he began painting rustic landscapes in the tradition of the Hudson River School. In the 1950s, he began spending part of the year in Taos, New Mexico, where he painted western landscapes and particularly luminous depictions of the desert sky. In his career as a painter, he produced over 15,000 works. His fascination with the sky and weather led to commissions to paint works for the U.S. Air Force and the production of a number of illustrated works on meteorology and weather forecasting. Sloane is even credited with creating the first televised weather reporting network, by arranging for local farmers to call in reports to a New England broadcasting station.
Sloane also had a great interest in New England folk culture, Colonial daily life, and Americana. He wrote and illustrated scores of Colonial era books on tools, architecture, farming techniques, folklore, and rural wisdom. Every book included detailed illustrations, hand lettered titles, and his characteristic folksy wit and observations. He developed an impressive collection of historic tools which became the nucleus of the collection in the Sloane-Stanley Tool Museum in Kent, Connecticut.
Sloane died in New York in 1985, while walking down the street to a luncheon held in his honor.
Sloane's best known books are A Reverence for Wood, which examines the history and tools of woodworking, as well as the philosophy of the woodworker; The Cracker Barrel, which is a compendium of folk wit and wisdom; and Diary of an Early American Boy: Noah Blake-1805, based on a diary he discovered at a local library book sale. His most famous painted work is probably the skyscape mural, Earth Flight Environment, which is still on display in the Independence Avenue Lobby in the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
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February 26, 2016There is so much cool stuff in this book, but you have to get past the "good old days" moaning on every single page and often every paragraph. Basically, everything except beds used to be good, and now everything is very bad. (But even hard beds were okay because humans were healthier then and slept better.)
But the information here is so fascinating! and the pictures are so fun! I wish Sloane had just talked about all the things, the bridges and tools and wagons and barns. His sweeping social conclusions don't even make sense. He's like that guy at the historical society who knows everything, but you want to get away from him because he says dumb or offensive things and won't let you get a word in edgewise.
Interesting: 10/10
Irritating: 9/10
But the information here is so fascinating! and the pictures are so fun! I wish Sloane had just talked about all the things, the bridges and tools and wagons and barns. His sweeping social conclusions don't even make sense. He's like that guy at the historical society who knows everything, but you want to get away from him because he says dumb or offensive things and won't let you get a word in edgewise.
Interesting: 10/10
Irritating: 9/10
March 4, 2023
It’s fascinating to read Eric Sloane’s descriptions of so many things lost to us today, especially the ordinary and mundane things once necessary to life and “homemade” in a time when everyone was by necessity a craftsman.
It’s jarring, too, to realize that the modern world Sloane mourns over in his account of the beautiful and bygone “Great-Grandfather’s” world is the world of 1956.
Still, one realizes that the readers of 2023 are disconnected in almost completely totality from our past. Eric Sloane would probably not be surprised to discover that his books are largely forgotten and that many people now won’t even bother watching a movie older than ten years, much less read a book dated 1956. That’s a shame.
It’s jarring, too, to realize that the modern world Sloane mourns over in his account of the beautiful and bygone “Great-Grandfather’s” world is the world of 1956.
Still, one realizes that the readers of 2023 are disconnected in almost completely totality from our past. Eric Sloane would probably not be surprised to discover that his books are largely forgotten and that many people now won’t even bother watching a movie older than ten years, much less read a book dated 1956. That’s a shame.
May 5, 2025
Lots of interesting information about the life and lifestyle in America in the mid-18th to mid 19th centuries. However, it is of its era, and heavily focused on the roles of men. Women appeared approximately three times in this book, and Black people only one time that I noticed. Again, I realize it is of its era! There are some very interesting items to learn about tools and trades, but it is all over blown by the style of the writer, which seems to think that everything old was far better than any progress we have made.
January 3, 2018
Few authors can bring the past so vividly to life as well as Eric Sloane. His deep and abiding respect for the people who settled this land is clear in the care he takes in his work. There is a touch of Edward Abbey in the way Mr. Sloane contrasts the care of former days with the shoddy and wasteful way we live today.
April 30, 2018
The sketches in this book are lovely and there is some interesting information presented. However, the negativity that pervades the entire book was tiresome.
November 17, 2018
Timeless.
February 19, 2017
Interesting stories and Anecdotes about daily life from early American life. Remarkable to learn about some of the industries that grew in America's early years that no longer exist today.
September 7, 2016
Very fun journey through historical American architecture and aspects of everyday life (e.g., unimaginably huge indoor ice-storage facilities, self-closing doors made entirely of wood, unheated churches, houses with inbuilt optical illusions, etc.)
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews