They lived "green" out of necessity―walking to work, repairing everything from worn shoes to wristwatches, recycling milk bottles and packing containers. Music was largely heard live and most residential streets had shade trees. The nearby Wabash River―a repeated subject of story and song―transported Sunday picnickers to public parks. In the form of an old-fashioned city directory, An American Hometown celebrates a bygone American era, focusing on life in 1920s Terre Haute, Indiana. With artfully drawn biographical sketches and generously illustrated histories, noted musician, historian, and storyteller Tom Roznowski not only evokes a beauty worth remembering, but also brings to light just how many of our modern ideas of sustainable living are deeply rooted in the American tradition. "Tom Roznowski has deployed the 1927 City Directory of Terre Haute like a mist net across time to catch a vanished place. An American Hometown is part Akenfield―Robert Blythe's portrait of an English village―and part Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology. Terre Haute, 1927, is more alive than many American cities today."―Howard Mansfield "Tom Roznowski brings the lost world of a city back to life, and in so doing asks us to re-imagine the way we live now. December 2009/January 2010"― Bloom Magazine "For Roznowski, the pursuit of the past is not an exercise in nostalgia, but an attempt to bring wisdom forward―to learn not just from our mistakes as a culture, but from the things we did right as well, and then left by the wayside in the 20th century's mad dash to a consumerist, automobile-centered society.February/March 2010"― Bloom "Roznowski is an evocative, romantic storyteller, and his research revives a simpler time and place not far from here. March 28, 2010"― The Herald Times "Roznowski has the storyteller's skill for isolating relevant detail and employing rhetorical flourish to illuminate both character and scene."―Jacob Jones, University of Maryland "Tom Roznowski uses an innovative way to capture the image of Terre Haute in 1927. The City Directory listings become a social history carried along by humor, deep feeling and a sense of national history. The prosperous and famous share the stage, as they should, with ordinary residents. Even those living at the County Poor Farm find their rightful place in the fabric of community.1983, IUP"―Dorothy W. Jerse, On the Banks of the Wabash: a photograph album of Greater Terre Haute 1900-1950 Tom Roznowski uses an innovative way to capture the image of Terre Haute in 1927. The City Directory listings become a social history carried along by humor, deep feeling and a sense of national history. The prosperous and famous share the stage, as they should, with ordinary residents. Even those living at the County Poor Farm find their rightful place in the fabric of community.1983, IUP -- Dorothy W. Jerse ― On the Banks of the Wabash: a photograph album of Greater Terre Haute 1900-1950 Tom Roznowski, based in Bloomington, Indiana, is a writer and musician. He is host of Hometown, a radio program broadcast by NPR affiliate WFIU.