Book Notes
Without Right Angles: The Round Barns
of Iowa. By Lowell J. Soike. (Des
Moines: Iowa State Historical Department
Office of Historic Preservation,
1983. viii + 103p.; illustrations,
notes, index.) "Round barns," in Mr. Soike's
definition, were structures which could
be truly round, octagonal, or in some
other polygonal form. He catalogs 160
round barns in Iowa, and traces the
general history of this aberrant but
practical design for the past 200 years in
this well-researched and illustrated
book. It is always encouraging to see a
competent reference work in fields such
as architecture and agriculture that
have been widely romanticized in popular
literature. Though round barns
probably have a much older history, such
designs were advocated in Eng-
land in the eighteenth century for both
rural cottages and barns. George
Washington built a 16-sided barn in
1793; and as late as 1927, round barns
were being advertised in Iowa. Mr. Soike
charts the main period of the Iowa
round barn between 1860 and 1930, with
the largest number constructed in
the early twentieth century. (The
nineteenth century octagonal barn is not an
uncommon sight in Ohio; the truly round
barn is, for some reason, less fre-
quently seen.) The convenience of a
round barn in handling livestock was a
major selling point, particularly for
dairy cattle in stalls facing a central feeding
area; most of these barns had a silo in
the center. The increase in the number
of round barns between 1910-1920 would
correspond with the rise of the
commercial milk industry.
Donald Hutslar
Indiana Stonecarver: The Story of
Thomas R. Reding. By Ann Nolan and
Keith A. Buckley. (Indianapolis: Indiana
Historical Society, 1984. v + 106p.;
illustrations, map and key to
cemeteries, bibliography.) This small, well-
illustrated volume details the craft and
life of an Indiana stonecarver whose
distinctive gravestones represent a
vital link between the rigid severity of Pur-
itan ones and the undistinguished
sentimentality of late nineteenth century
gravestones. Thomas Reding's intense and
powerful work compares favora-
bly to the unexceptional stones worked
by his contemporaries and, as a mas-
ter of a then-declining craft, he
represents the last truly original carver in the
Jackson and Washington counties area.
While limited in its appeal, Indiana
Stonecarver might serve those interested as a useful resource
providing de-
tails on numerous Reding carvings and
offering directions, maps, and keys to
specific cemeteries.
Laura Russell
Recollections: The People of the Blue
Ridge Remember. By Dorothy Noble
Smith. (Verona, Virginia: McClure
Printing Company, Inc., 1983. 82p.; illus-
trations, maps, notes, appendix, index.) and Wilderness
Plots: Tales About
the Settlement of the American Land. By Scott R. Sanders. (New York:
William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1983.
128p.; illustrations.) These two
Book Notes 207
slender books represent contrasting
techniques for dealing with stories of the
past. Recollections is a compilation and
condensation of the oral accounts of
140 Blue Ridge Mountain families about
their lives in the years before 1934
when Shenandoah National Park was
created. Their stories, for the most
part, provide interesting details of an
isolated, preindustrial lifestyle which
survived into the twentieth century.
However, the book seems to mistake
oral traditions and the memories of old
age for unbiased historical docu-
ments. Reminiscences about a vanished
homeland would seem inclined to-
ward idealization, yet Smith never
indicates that she recognizes this possi-
ble distortion or the others inherent in
oral history. The book provides a
necessary antidote to the stereotypes
about the people of the Blue Ridge
Mountains, but its attempt to turn its
sources' tales into entirely accurate ac-
counts treats them with less honesty
than they deserve.
Wilderness Plots, on the other hand, takes fifty somewhat random and
supposedly factual details about the
settlement of the Old Northwest
Territory-particularly Ohio-and turns
them into fiction. None of the stories
based on these historical facts is over
two pages long, yet through their sub-
stance and juxtaposition Scott creates a
distinctive vision of that period and
place which seems emotionally
true-regardless of its factuality. The brief-
ness of the stories, the spare writing,
and the abrupt, surprising twists give
this work something of the quality of
myth. The individual pieces linger in
the mind like overheard fragments of
conversation, and the images they
create are perfectly complemented by the
woodcut-style illustrations. Manip-
ulating history to suit his artistic
purposes, Scott has produced a resonant
work of fiction.
Christopher Bensch
Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute