Reviews for Postal Age: The Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth-Century America

The average rating for Postal Age: The Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth-Century America based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-02-06 00:00:00 Paul Martin A tad more academic than I expected but once I got into it, I enjoyed the author's writing and the exposition of how early America interacted with and changed the Postal Service over time. I thought it was a great way to read about early America from a different perspective than just battles, leaders and expansion.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-07-11 00:00:00 Rhoderick Patricio Henkin's approach to the post is an important one for histories of communication and cultures of letters (...in the broad, not epistolary, sense): the aim of this book is to outline its cultural impression. The greatest limitation to this book, honestly, is its brevity. Essentially ending, aside from a few references, with 1865, one wonders why more time wasn't spend on the years immediately after the War, during which the post was implicated in the overhauls experienced by the reunited nation. But even within its own time period, one wishes for a few more than 175 pages to help expand the rich field Henkin develops -- what about the postcard, for example? Or more on the urban-rural tension? Or the role of the post in "settling" the West, both for settlers and for Eastern imaginations (the California Gold Rush gets attention, of course, but this San Fran-filtered channel was of course unique)?