Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating and comprehensive
Review: This is a wonderful book. It blends science, history and art to create an interesting perspective on the stone walls of New England. Thorson discusses the geological aspects of stone, the various types of stone walls and how they were built as well as the process of frost heaving and the disintegration of old walls. I hope this book causes people who have looked at stone walls and have seen only rocks to take a new, deeper look at them. They, and "Stone by Stone" are quite poetic.
Rating: 
Summary: Neat Trash
Review: Thorson presents his case for the annual crop of stones on New England farms from an historical perspective and from his expertise in geophysics and geology. The writing style is clear but repeats information from one chapter to another. The basic premises are implied but not precisely stated and enlarged upon -1. Early settlers and farmers wanted land for growing food; stones "heaved" up every year on the land were looked upon as trash. The more land cleared of trees and brush, the more land available for growing food BUT the clearing added impetus to stones being heaved up. Settlers piled stones on boundaries of their fields, often leaving space between two lines of stones where brush and other trash was tossed. 2. The marks on these stones are not glyphs or any form of record, they are merely stress marks.Thorson's book is fun to read on two levels - first as a scholarly "comeback" meant to take the wind out of the sails of high-flown rhetoric on the ethnic and socio-economic origins and meanings of stone fences. Second, the bits of history and geological information are just enough to allow the reader to understand without being overwhelmed ala James Michener.
Rating:
Summary: Neat Trash
Review: Thorson presents his case for the annual crop of stones on New England farms from an historical perspective and from his expertise in geophysics and geology. The writing style is clear but repeats information from one chapter to another. The basic premises are implied but not precisely stated and enlarged upon -1. Early settlers and farmers wanted land for growing food; stones "heaved" up every year on the land were looked upon as trash. The more land cleared of trees and brush, the more land available for growing food BUT the clearing added impetus to stones being heaved up. Settlers piled stones on boundaries of their fields, often leaving space between two lines of stones where brush and other trash was tossed. 2. The marks on these stones are not glyphs or any form of record, they are merely stress marks. Thorson's book is fun to read on two levels - first as a scholarly "comeback" meant to take the wind out of the sails of high-flown rhetoric on the ethnic and socio-economic origins and meanings of stone fences. Second, the bits of history and geological information are just enough to allow the reader to understand without being overwhelmed ala James Michener.
Rating: 
Summary: Densely enjoyable
Review: Thorson's discussion of frost heave is so wonderful I no longer resent picking those damn rocks out of the garden. Well, I still don't like those damn cobbles and pebbles but at least now it makes sense. I lived on sand in Schenectady, NY for awhile and I almost forgot how easy mending that lawn was, you could dig without a shovel, but New England called me home and alas this is a land of rocks, but walking through the woods here in Massachusetts with its stranded rock walls, whose existence in trackless woods makes one wonder who built them, so long ago that the trees surrounding them are well over 100 feet high, humbles one, such a long history, so many generations gone, you can feel the hard labor that must have gone into hauling these tons of rock, these walls that run up and down hillsides through woods that haven't seen farming in over 150 years.
I loved the soil talk, the geology, the history lesson, this is real history, the story of the people, explaining the reasons for the individual decisions of the many; the big history moves are the result of the many many little historical imperatives.
If you live in New England or any other glaciated terrain, you should read this book, you will find your surroundings, your own neighborhood woods, a source of new fascination.
Rating:
Summary: More Geology Than Walls
Review: When I picked up this book I thought: "How can an entire book be written about stones walls?" As it turns out the author did not write an entire book about stone walls. The author gives us the hisory of stone walls starting with the formation of the earth, through formation of rocks, the ice age and finally American history. There is actually more about geology that stone walls themselves, although the author tried mightily to write a few hundred pages about them. The geology and history is well-written and interesting. I learned quite about when walls were generally built and how the stones came to be that comprised them. However, the last third or so of the book - that part devoted to the walls themselves was often redundant. It seemed the author was searching for words to fill the pages and stretching - like the last pages of a term paper you know should be eight pages but you have to make the assigned ten pages. A chapter on builders and technique would have been more useful than the stretched parts. There are pearls of interesting history and I am not sorry I read the book. I just wished it had been shorter by an excision of the redundancies and "stretches".
Rating:
Summary: More Geology Than Walls
Review: When I picked up this book I thought: "How can an entire book be written about stones walls?" As it turns out the author did not write an entire book about stone walls. The author gives us the hisory of stone walls starting with the formation of the earth, through formation of rocks, the ice age and finally American history. There is actually more about geology that stone walls themselves, although the author tried mightily to write a few hundred pages about them. The geology and history is well-written and interesting. I learned quite about when walls were generally built and how the stones came to be that comprised them. However, the last third or so of the book - that part devoted to the walls themselves was often redundant. It seemed the author was searching for words to fill the pages and stretching - like the last pages of a term paper you know should be eight pages but you have to make the assigned ten pages. A chapter on builders and technique would have been more useful than the stretched parts. There are pearls of interesting history and I am not sorry I read the book. I just wished it had been shorter by an excision of the redundancies and "stretches".
Rating:
Summary: More Geology Than Walls
Review: When I picked up this book I thought: "How can an entire book be written about stones walls?" As it turns out the author did not write an entire book about stone walls. The author gives us the hisory of stone walls starting with the formation of the earth, through formation of rocks, the ice age and finally American history. There is actually more about geology that stone walls themselves, although the author tried mightily to write a few hundred pages about them. The geology and history is well-written and interesting. I learned quite about when walls were generally built and how the stones came to be that comprised them. However, the last third or so of the book - that part devoted to the walls themselves was often redundant. It seemed the author was searching for words to fill the pages and stretching - like the last pages of a term paper you know should be eight pages but you have to make the assigned ten pages. A chapter on builders and technique would have been more useful than the stretched parts. There are pearls of interesting history and I am not sorry I read the book. I just wished it had been shorter by an excision of the redundancies and "stretches".
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