In 1871 there were 252,539 miles of stone walls in New England and New York―enough to circle the earth ten times. What do we actually know about these structures? About the people who built them, and why they were built? Stone walls are not simply monuments to the skill of Yankee farmers. The historical record makes clear that many were built by slaves, Indians, indentured servants, and children. Sermons in Stone is the surprising history of the walls, a story that begins in the Ice Age and has been shaped by the fencing dilemmas of the nineteenth century, by conflicts between Native Americans and colonists over land use, by America's waves of immigration and suburbanization. Beautifully illustrated by David Howell, this is an illuminating and entertaining work of the first rank.