* Now taking pre-orders. This title is currently in production with expected delivery in October.
A Reverence for Craft: Eric Sloane & the American Spirit
Three completely unabridged titles by the late Eric Sloane, bound as one high-quality hardbound volume to last the generations.
Table of Contents:
Foreword: “A Recovery of Awareness” – Joshua A. Klein
Introduction: Eric Sloane (from his bicentennial book, The Spirits of ’76)
A Museum of Early American Tools
A Reverence for Wood
The Seasons of America Past
Of all the sources of inspiration that modern hand-tool woodworkers dutifully credit, there’s no name more cited than that of Eric Sloane. The 40-some books he wrote over his 44-year writing career (1941-1985) captured the imagination of a generation of people who were starved for an authentic and ennobling way of life – the old ways they felt were vanishing around them. Just ask: today’s most passionate hand-tool woodworkers will happily tell you of their first encounter with Sloane. Joel Moskowitz, founder of Tools for Working Wood, said Eric Sloane was “the most important influence in my lifetime’s involvement with woodworking tools.” Windsor chairmaker Peter Galbert said Sloane’s books were “a huge influence; exciting me about what could be made with simple tools.”
Even the legendary “woodwright” himself, Roy Underhill, credited Sloane with his initial inspiration: “His books… probably did more to interest Americans in early technology and tools than anything else, they were certainly very important in my beginnings. For me and so many other folks from the city making that first back-to-the-land move, Eric Sloane was my first teacher.… He was a pioneer, and he was also a detective. He would look at the marks in the wood, the tool marks…. He related those tool marks in the wood to show how the tools were used.”
There is no more fitting occasion to revitalize three of Sloane’s most important works than the 250th anniversary of the country Eric loved so dearly. If more people would begin to exhibit the purposeful American spirit that Sloane lauded so boldly, surely our society would be on a steady path to wholeness. M&T offers this republication of three of Sloane’s most inspiring books on pre-industrial craftsmanship as a celebration of that conscientious spirit – one that desperately needs to be revitalized today. Sloane’s biographer, James Mauch keenly observed 26 years ago, “Americans have eclipsed our age of profound purpose, meaning and understanding. We have allowed our technological and mechanical progression to far exceed our moral and ethical progression, and the gap widens with every year. There is much value in pausing to evaluate where we have been. Only then will we be able to plan intelligently where we are going.”
It is our hope that the republication of these titles at such a momentous occasion will elicit just such an evaluation.
Hardbound, 392 pages, matte-coated paper, sewn binding. Printed in the USA.
