How the Post Office Created America: A History
Author | : | |
Rating | : | 4.85 (579 Votes) |
Asin | : | B01G62ECW2 |
Format Type | : | |
Number of Pages | : | 446 Pages |
Publish Date | : | 2016-02-22 |
Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
You cannot understand American progress without understanding the U.S. Post's pivotal role in American democracy Essential reading if you want to understand American innovation and exceptionalism. This book is a fun and informative read. It is not just a comprehensive and fascinating study of the post office, but also of American democracy and cultural change. The post office was a foundational institution and its crucial role in the development of the country as we know it has been forgotten over the last several decades.. "This is a wonderful story of the Post Office's history from the days" according to Philip Ferguson. This is a wonderful story of the Post Office's history from the days of Ben Franklin to the present. In many ways it was the PO that made America what it is today. The loss of the USPS would be a real bummer even in the days of e-mail etc.. "A wonderful summary of the history of the U" according to JKP. A wonderful summary of the history of the U.S. Post Office. I particularly loved the story of how the Post Office coped with the Civil War and how in spite of the war, it continued to improve mail service.
Now the Post Office is at a crossroads. It enabled America to shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy and to develop the publishing industry, consumer culture, and the political party system. A masterful history of a long underappreciated institution, How the Post Office Created America examines the surprising role of the postal service in our nation's political, social, economic, and physical development. The founders established the Post Office before they had even signed the Declaration of Independence, and for a very long time it was the US government's largest and most important endeavor - indeed, it was the government for most citizens. Winifred Gallagher presents the history of the Post Office as America's own story, told from a fresh perspective over more than two centuries. The mandate to deliver the mail - then "the media" - imposed the federal footprint on vast, often contested parts of the continent and transformed a wilderness into a social landscape of post roads and villages centered on post offices. Still one of the country's two major civilian employers, the post was the first to hire women, African Americans, and other mi