Customer Reviews

Homebuilding and Woodworking in Colonial America (Illustrated Living History Series)

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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Even for the novice, this book is easy to understand.
A historical look at the ingenuity of home building.
Several interesting anecdotes as well about the origin
of various terminology and the chronology of various practices
and innovations. Raise the bent and connect the girt because the summer beams are here! (-:

Most of the books that explore Colonial American vernacular architecture are more interested in definig styles and building uses. The focus of "Home Building" is in the tools and technology used by early American colonists. C. Keith Wilbur tells this story by following the construction story of one particular home. He begins with the initial harvesting of the timber and lovingly follows the story to the last finish carpentry detail.

C. Ketih Wilbur follows in a long tradition of great American illustrators of material culture. Wilbur's illustrations are not as fine as Edwin Tunis' or as lyrical as Eric Sloane's illustrations. What Wilbur has going for him is the sheer volume of carefully crafted illustrations he includes in his work. I finished this book both impressed by the ingenuity of our colonial ancestors and the technical virtuosity of Wilbur's illustrations. This is a great book and I look forward to collecting Wilbur's other volumes in the "Living American History" series.

This book is just great. The information is just the right amount of specific and detailed without loosing the reader. The pictures are excellent. If you are using this book for elementary age students they may struggle a little with the hand written letters. Otherwise this is an excellent resource for inquiry based projects and research for kids.

This book and the series of which it is a part is well done and a very good introduction the subject matter. As a professional architecural historian and archaeologist I was hoping for more depth, but this is clearly not written for professionals. However the bibliography is helpful and I did learn something new about one item that I have not found in the "professional" sources.

You will not be able to put this book down! The incredible richness of the information and the quality of both the pen and ink drawings and the narative are outstanding.

This book really brings together the why and how of early American architecture: It tells the story of how the richness of wood resources in early America affected the development of tool technology which in turn contributed to the evolution of building techniques that were uniquely American.

If you like Eric Sloan, or historical woodworking in general, you are going to love C. Keith Wilbur.

...which is a pleasant, very broad overview of a deep subject. When you cover an entire culture in a few pages, necessariy a lot of detail gets left out. For the interested amateur entranced with early building and architecture practices, for the talented young person, for the person who wants all the good available references, this is a very good book. Much of the information is cursory but there is still good stuff here.