Diary of an Early American Boy: 1805

For his fifteenth birthday in 1805, Noah Blake received a little leather-bound diary. This reprint of his actual journal offers modern readers a charming glimpse of a vanished era through the eyes of a nineteenth-century farm boy. Eric Sloane—a distinguished historian, author, and artist—has expanded Noah Blake’s daily entries with a fascinating explanatory narrative and 72 delightful drawings.

Hailed by Library Journal as “informative and nostalgic,” this unique book features descriptions and drawings of such common chores as making nails, building a bridge, splitting shingles, spring plowing, and maple-sugaring, along with the construction of an entire backwoods farm. The result is a remarkable window onto the customs and preoccupations of rural New England two centuries ago.