What do we actually know about stone walls? about the people who built
them, and why? Stone walls are not simply monuments to the skill of
Yankee farmers. The historical record makes clear that many were built
by slaves, Indians, indentured servants, and children. Sermons in Stone
is the surprising and illuminating history of the walls, a story that
begins in the Ice Age and that has been shaped by the fencing dilemmas
of the nineteenth century, by conflicts between Native Americans and
colonists over land use, by American waves of immigration and
suburbanization. "Who would think that a history of that humble workaday
structure, the stone wall, would be so full of the fascinating, the
peculiar, the downright eccentric? But here it is, laid out in a
sprightly style and beautifully illustrated by the ink drawings of David
Howell." --Dallas Morning News