The Amish are people steeped in customs and traditions based on living a simple, quiet existence. Get to know Lancaster County's Amish through amusing and entertaining folk tales and legends. Seven stories highlight how the Amish and other Pennsylvania Dutch residents live; there's even a "true" ghost story for your enjoyment. Learn how John the Blacksmith foils the Devil, laugh at the shenanigans of Eilenshpiggel, read about the legends behind graven images, and enjoy the Pennsylvania German humor with stories about the Ephrata man and his tooth and the Devil-based stories from Lehigh County residents. Stories feature 30 images of furniture, quilts, Amish toys, and other items made by Pennsylvania German artisans, with text explaining their significance today.

Ideas, ideas, ideas... they filled the rooms highlighted in 1950s advertising by Armstrong, the leading maker of flooring and ceiling products. Here you will find over 350 photographs of room interiors that appeared in popular magazines from the '50s, inspiring the looks we now associate with that decade. Each one offers new decorating ideas that set the standard for the 1950s with furniture, floor coverings, accessories, and home improvements. Examples include a boys' bedroom that can reflect changing interests as the boys grow into their teens, a living room whose interior can be converted from summer to winter decor in just an hour, and a den with a "secret life" as a guest room. These were refreshingly new ideas in the 1950s and are still practical today. If you want a crash course in imaginative interior design of the 1950s, this is the book you must have.

Beautiful, idea-filled room interiors seen in American popular magazines of the 1960s are reproduced here in over 200 color photographs with detailed identification. Readers adapted these designs from Armstrong Cork Company's advertising pages for their own homes. It was customary for Armstrong designers to create rooms that were chock-full of new ideas, as they had been doing for decades. But during the 1960s, the interiors underwent subtle changes in colors and materials which today are recognized as characteristic of this decade. Now these rooms reflected the changing culture in America where homes were enlarged to accommodate growing families and rooms were decorated with an emphasis on being beautiful. At Armstrong, new types of flooring were developed which made vinyl superior to linoleum because of its improved wear characteristics and easier installation. Ceiling materials also were developed to contribute to new room interiors that provided solutions to cultural changes of the 1960s, and from which people today can draw useful ideas.