The quintessential New England barn–photogenic, full of character, and framed by flaming autumn foliage–is an endangered species. Of some 30,000 barns in Vermont alone, nearly a thousand a year are lost to fire, collapse, or bulldozers. Thomas Durant Visser’s field guide to the barns, silos, sugar houses, granaries, tobacco barns, and potato houses of New England is an attempt to document not just their structure but their traditions and innovations...

Freelance writer Troy Chance is snapping photos of the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival ice palace when the ice-cutting machine falls silent. Encased in the ice is the shadowy outline of a body--a man she knows. One of her roommates falls under suspicion, and the media descends. Troy's assigned to write an in-depth feature on the dead man, who, it turns out, was the privileged son of a wealthy Connecticut family who had been playing at a blue collar life...

"Life in Chittenden County shares the stories and memories of 13 local residents who tell Vermont's history as they lived it. Included are stories about the lakes significance, rural farm life, the Winooski mills and the bustling Burlington economy" -- container.