The story of the American Quilt Trail, featuring the colorful patterns of quilt squares painted large on barns throughout North America, is the story of one of the fastest-growing grassroots public arts movements in the United States and Canada. In Barn Quilts and the American Quilt Trail Movement Suzi Parron takes us to twenty-five states as well as Canada to visit the people and places that have put this movement on America’s tourist and folk art map. Through dozens of interviews with barn quilt artists, committee members, and barn owners, Parron documents a journey that began in 2001 with the founder of the movement, Donna Sue Groves. Groves’s desire to honor her mother with a quilt square painted on their barn became a group effort that eventually grew into a county-wide project. Today, quilt squares form a long imaginary clothesline, appearing on more than three thousand barns scattered along one hundred and twenty driving trails. With more than eighty full-color photographs, Parron documents here a movement that combines rural economic development with an American folk art phenomenon.

An exploration of the fast food industry in the United States, from its roots to its long-term consequences.

"It's everywhere. It's toxic. And it lasts forever." Asbestos? Nuclear waste? No. This statement, made by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2003, refers to a little-known but ubiquitous chemical compound whose trade name is C8. Manufactured by DuPont, it is used in the making of a plethora of stain-resistant, waterproof, and grease-resistant consumer products. The first members of the public to hear about C8, in January 2002, were the residents of the Mid-Ohio Valley, whose water supplies were found to contain detectable amounts. The EPA launched a multi-agency review of the manmade chemical, which became the largest investigation of its kind. As a local journalist, Lyons has covered the C8 story from the beginning. Here she explains how the danger of C8 first came to light, how the investigation progressed, and what remedies have been initiated.