Download or read book The Story of the Post Office written by W. B. Jones and published by . This book was released on 1889 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Story of the Post Office Containing a History of the World s Postal Service written by Jones W B and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2022-10-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Download or read book How the Post Office Created America written by Winifred Gallagher and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-06-28 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 U.S. government’s largest and most important endeavor—indeed, it was the government for most citizens. This was no conventional mail network but the central nervous system of the new body politic, designed to bind thirteen quarrelsome colonies into the United States by delivering news about public affairs to every citizen—a radical idea that appalled Europe’s great powers. America’s uniquely democratic post powerfully shaped its lively, argumentative culture of uncensored ideas and opinions and made it the world’s information and communications superpower with astonishing speed. 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. The post was the catalyst of the nation’s transportation grid, from the stagecoach lines to the airlines, and the lifeline of the great migration from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It enabled America to shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy and to develop the publishing industry, the consumer culture, and the political party system. Still one of the country’s two major civilian employers, the post was the first to hire women, African Americans, and other minorities for positions in public life. Starved by two world wars and the Great Depression, confronted with the country’s increasingly anti-institutional mind-set, and struggling with its doubled mail volume, the post stumbled badly in the turbulent 1960s. Distracted by the ensuing modernization of its traditional services, however, it failed to transition from paper mail to email, which prescient observers saw as its logical next step. Now the post office is at a crossroads. Before deciding its future, Americans should understand what this grand yet overlooked institution has accomplished since 1775 and consider what it should and could contribute in the twenty-first century. Gallagher argues that now, more than ever before, the imperiled post office deserves this effort, because just as the founders anticipated, it created forward-looking, communication-oriented, idea-driven America.

Download or read book Spreading the News written by Richard R. JOHN and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the seven decades from its establishment in 1775 to the commercialization of the electric telegraph in 1844, the American postal system spurred a communications revolution no less far-reaching than the subsequent revolutions associated with the telegraph, telephone, and computer. This book tells the story of that revolution and the challenge it posed for American business, politics, and cultural life. During the early republic, the postal system was widely hailed as one of the most important institutions of the day. No other institution had the capacity to transmit such a large volume of information on a regular basis over such an enormous geographical expanse. The stagecoaches and postriders who conveyed the mail were virtually synonymous with speed. In the United States, the unimpeded transmission of information has long been hailed as a positive good. In few other countries has informational mobility been such a cherished ideal. Richard John shows how postal policy can help explain this state of affairs. He discusses its influence on the development of such information-intensive institutions as the national market, the voluntary association, and the mass party. He traces its consequences for ordinary Americans, including women, blacks, and the poor. In a broader sense, he shows how the postal system worked to create a national society out of a loose union of confederated states. This exploration of the role of the postal system in American public life provides a fresh perspective not only on an important but neglected chapter in American history, but also on the origins of some of the most distinctive features of American life today. Table of Contents: Preface Acknowledgments The Postal System as an Agent of Change The Communications Revolution Completing the Network The Imagined Community The Invasion of the Sacred The Wellspring of Democracy The Interdiction of Dissent Conclusion Abbreviations Notes Sources Index Reviews of this book: "[A] splendid new book...that gives the lie to any notion that 'government' and 'administration' were 'absent' in early America." DD--Theda Skocpol, Social Science History "This well-researched and elegantly written book will become a model for historians attempting to link public policy to cultural and political change...[It] will engage not only historians of the early republic, but all scholars interested in the relationship between state and society." DD--John Majewski, Journal of Economic History "The strength of the book is...the author's ability to untangle the thousands of social, political, economic, and cultural threads of the postal fabric and to rearrange them into a clear and compelling social history." DD--Roy Alden Atwood, Journal of American History "Richard R. John provides an insightful cultural history of the often-overlooked American postal system, concentrating on its preeminent status for long-distance communication between its birth in 1775 and the commercialization of the electric telegraph in 1844...John effectively draws upon government documents, newspapers, travelogues, and contemporary social and political histories to argue that the postal system causes and mirrors dramatic changes in American public life during this period...John focuses his study on the communication revolution of the past, yet his meticulous analysis of the complex motives forming the postal institution and its policies relate to such current controversies as those that surround the transmission of information in cyberspace. These contemporary disputes highlight the power of the government in shaping the communication of the people. John privileges the postal institution as the reigning communication system, yet he links it with the developing ideology of the nation, and the scope of his study ensures its value--in the disciplines of communication studies, literature, history, and political science, among others--as a history of the past and present." DD--Sarah R. Marino, Canadian Review of American Studies "Spreading the News exemplifies the kind of sophisticated and nuanced research that US postal history has long needed. Richard R. John breaks from the internalist, antiquarian tradition characteristic of so many post office histories to place the postal system at the centre of American national development." DD--Richard B. Kielbowicz, Business History "[John] presents a thoroughly researched and well-written book...[which will give] insight into the history of the post office and its impact on American life." DD--Library Journal "It is surely true that in Richard John the post has had the good fortune to have found its proper historian, one capable of appreciating the complex design and social importance of the means a people use to distribute information. He has also accomplished the impressive feat of gathering together the pieces of a postal history present elsewhere as so many tiny fragments. John has drawn into a coherent design the stories of postal patronage, the decisions about postal privacy, the incidents along post roads used by others as illustrative anecdotes. John's work has inspired in him a deep appreciation for the accomplishments of the post." DD--Ann Fabian, The Yale Review "John's book explains how the letters and newspapers sent through the post were really the glue that held the early 13 states together and that embraced additional states as the nation expanded westward...It is a splendid attempt to show the importance of mail service in the years before the telegraph or the telephone made at least brief news transmission possible. The postal system of the 19th century really was a factor, perhaps the major factor, in making the United States one nation." DD--Richard B. Graham, Linn's Stamp News "This book traces the central role of the postal system in [its] communications revolution and its contribution to American public life. The author shows how the postal system influenced the establishment of a national society out of a loose union of confederated states. Richard John throws light onto a chapter in American history that is often neglected but sets up the origins of some of the most distinctive features of American life today...The book is a comprehensive study on an important American institution during a critical epoch in its history." DD--Monika Plum, Prometheus [UK] "John has produced an original, well-documented, and thoughtful study that offers alternative and enticing interpretations of Jacksonian policies and public institutions." DD--Choice

Download or read book Neither Snow Nor Rain written by Devin Leonard and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[The] book makes you care what happens to its main protagonist, the U.S. Postal Service itself. And, as such, it leaves you at the end in suspense.” —USA Today Founded by Benjamin Franklin, the United States Postal Service was the information network that bound far-flung Americans together, and yet, it is slowly vanishing. Critics say it is slow and archaic. Mail volume is down. The workforce is shrinking. Post offices are closing. In Neither Snow Nor Rain, journalist Devin Leonard tackles the fascinating, centuries-long history of the USPS, from the first letter carriers through Franklin’s days, when postmasters worked out of their homes and post roads cut new paths through the wilderness. Under Andrew Jackson, the post office was molded into a vast patronage machine, and by the 1870s, over seventy percent of federal employees were postal workers. As the country boomed, USPS aggressively developed new technology, from mobile post offices on railroads and airmail service to mechanical sorting machines and optical character readers. Neither Snow Nor Rain is a rich, multifaceted history, full of remarkable characters, from the stamp-collecting FDR, to the revolutionaries who challenged USPS’s monopoly on mail, to the renegade union members who brought the system—and the country—to a halt in the 1970s. “Delectably readable . . . Leonard’s account offers surprises on almost every other page . . . [and] delivers both the triumphs and travails with clarity, wit and heart.” —Chicago Tribune

Download or read book The United States Postal Service written by United States Postal Service Staff and published by . This book was released on 2016-02 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Postal Age written by David M. Henkin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans commonly recognize television, e-mail, and instant messaging as agents of pervasive cultural change. But many of us may not realize that what we now call snail mail was once just as revolutionary. As David M. Henkin argues in The Postal Age, a burgeoning postal network initiated major cultural shifts during the nineteenth century, laying the foundation for the interconnectedness that now defines our ever-evolving world of telecommunications. This fascinating history traces these shifts from their beginnings in the mid-1800s, when cheaper postage, mass literacy, and migration combined to make the long-established postal service a more integral and viable part of everyday life. With such dramatic events as the Civil War and the gold rush underscoring the importance and necessity of the post, a surprisingly broad range of Americans—male and female, black and white, native-born and immigrant—joined this postal network, regularly interacting with distant locales before the existence of telephones or even the widespread use of telegraphy. Drawing on original letters and diaries from the period, as well as public discussions of the expanding postal system, Henkin tells the story of how these Americans adjusted to a new world of long-distance correspondence, crowded post offices, junk mail, valentines, and dead letters. The Postal Age paints a vibrant picture of a society where possibilities proliferated for the kinds of personal and impersonal communications that we often associate with more recent historical periods. In doing so, it significantly increases our understanding of both antebellum America and our own chapter in the history of communications.

Download or read book How the Post Office Created America written by Winifred Gallagher and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-07-04 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “’The history of its Post Office is nothing less than the story of America,’ Ms. Gallagher’s opening sentence declares, and in this lively book she makes the case well.”—Wall Street Journal 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 U.S. government’s largest and most important endeavor—indeed, it was the government for most citizens. This was no conventional mail network but the central nervous system of the new body politic, designed to bind thirteen quarrelsome colonies into the United States by delivering news about public affairs to every citizen—a radical idea that appalled Europe’s great powers. America’s uniquely democratic post powerfully shaped its lively, argumentative culture of uncensored ideas and opinions and made it the world’s information and communications superpower with astonishing speed. 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. The post was the catalyst of the nation’s transportation grid, from the stagecoach lines to the airlines, and the lifeline of the great migration from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It enabled America to shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy and to develop the publishing industry, the consumer culture, and the political party system. Still one of the country’s two major civilian employers, the post was the first to hire women, African Americans, and other minorities for positions in public life. Starved by two world wars and the Great Depression, confronted with the country’s increasingly anti-institutional mind-set, and struggling with its doubled mail volume, the post stumbled badly in the turbulent 1960s. Distracted by the ensuing modernization of its traditional services, however, it failed to transition from paper mail to email, which prescient observers saw as its logical next step. Now the post office is at a crossroads. Before deciding its future, Americans should understand what this grand yet overlooked institution has accomplished since 1775 and consider what it should and could contribute in the twenty-first century. Gallagher argues that now, more than ever before, the imperiled post office deserves this effort, because just as the founders anticipated, it created forward-looking, communication-oriented, idea-driven America.

Download or read book Post Office written by Charles Bukowski and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Bukowski’s classic roman à clef, Post Office, captures the despair, drudgery, and happy dissolution of his alter ego, Henry Chinaski, as he enters middle age. Post Office is an account of Bukowski alter-ego Henry Chinaski. It covers the period of Chinaski’s life from the mid-1950s to his resignation from the United States Postal Service in 1969, interrupted only by a brief hiatus during which he supported himself by gambling at horse races. “The Walt Whitman of Los Angeles.”—Joyce Carol Oates “He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels.”—Leonard Cohen, songwriter

Download or read book There s Always Work at the Post Office written by Philip F. Rubio and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2010-05-15 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings to life the important but neglected story of African American postal workers and the critical role they played in the U.S. labor and black freedom movements. Historian Philip Rubio, a former postal worker, integrates civil rights, labor, and left movement histories that too often are written as if they happened separately. Centered on New York City and Washington, D.C., the book chronicles a struggle of national significance through its examination of the post office, a workplace with facilities and unions serving every city and town in the United States. Black postal workers--often college-educated military veterans--fought their way into postal positions and unions and became a critical force for social change. They combined black labor protest and civic traditions to construct a civil rights unionism at the post office. They were a major factor in the 1970 nationwide postal wildcat strike, which resulted in full collective bargaining rights for the major postal unions under the newly established U.S. Postal Service in 1971. In making the fight for equality primary, African American postal workers were influential in shaping today's post office and postal unions.

Download or read book The History of the Post Office from Its Establishment Down to 1836 written by Herbert Joyce and published by Double 9 Books. This book was released on 2024-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The History of the Post Office, from Its Establishment Down to 1836" by Herbert Joyce is a captivating exploration of postal history, chronicling the evolution of communication through postal services. This historical nonfiction work delves deep into the development of the postal system, examining its growth and transformation over time. Joyce meticulously traces the historical development of postal routes, mail transportation, and mail delivery methods, shedding light on the role of postmasters and the introduction of postage stamps. Through vivid descriptions and meticulous research, he brings to life the early postal networks and the challenges faced in establishing efficient mail communication. This authoritative account also delves into the significance of postal reforms in shaping the postal system, highlighting its impact on communication and societal development. From the establishment of early postal routes to the introduction of innovative delivery methods, Joyce's narrative offers valuable insights into the evolution of postal services up to the year 1836. With its blend of historical scholarship and engaging storytelling, "The History of the Post Office" serves as an indispensable resource for anyone interested in understanding the crucial role of postal services in shaping communication networks and fostering societal connections during this pivotal period in history.

Download or read book Catalogue of the Philatelic Library of the Earl of Crawford K T written by James Ludovic Lindsay Earl of Crawford and published by London : Philatelic Literature Society. This book was released on 1911 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book We Deliver written by Tom Riley and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This history of the postal service, from its inception over 6,000 years ago to the modern and efficient service we enjoy today, chronicles the deeds performed on and off the job by the men and women of the U.S. Postal Service. This tribute to the 790,000 men and women employed by the U.S. Postal Service includes stories about courage and kindness, heroism and humor. Discussions include: how war in the Persian Gulf highlights the importance of mail, the need for communication felt by all societies, and the importance of postal services since their inception 6,000 years ago; man's ingenuity in transporting messages, how Rowland Hill's reforms and contributions to postal operations bring speedier delivery and education to the masses, and The International Postal Congress Treaty; history and development of the U.S. Postal Service, including Ben Franklin's contribution to postal service development in the U.S., the Civil War and postal service, the pony express, and the history of air mail; the U.S. Post Office undergoes an era of change: major accomplishments under reorganization, post offices and public art in the New Deal; the postal strike: workers risk it all in the historic 1971 strike, Nixon signs the Postal Reorganization Act, the strike brings changes to the National Association of Letter Carriers; stamp collecting, soliloquy of a postage stamp, stories behind the stamps, stuck on stamps, getting started, Baltic nations give significance to older issues; one man's answer to a modern prayer - "to feed the hungry," seeing invisible people, affordable housing and homelessness; carrier exploits on and off the job: a watchful carrier saves patron's life, bringing relief to quake victims, Postal Walk benefits abused children, open house a grand success, human chain pulls boy from ice; the postal inspection service: protecting the work environment, forfeiture ($78 million returned to Postal Service from insider trading on Wall Street), internal audits, bombs in the mail, crime lab celebrates 50th anniversary; EARTH: Handle with Care: carriers make a difference on environmental issues, clearing the air, troubled waters, acid rain, leaky landfills, our disappearing rainforest; meet our former Postmaster General Anthony M. Frank: he cares about people and admires innovation, and he can handle the heat, too; privatization exposed: Canada's privatized post office puts profit before service, franchise follies, the price of privatization, union busting; postal lore and trivia; automation, contracting out, barcoding (how private companies can save millions on their mailing cost), as deliverers of forty percent of the world's mail, the U.S. leads in mail processing technology; understanding your post office and how your post office operates to serve you; postal kids news: stories for young children and the young at heart, things to do and build; and, how to apply for postal service employment. A glossary of U.S. postal terms, a list of postmaster generals of the United States, photographs and a bibliography enhance the text.

Download or read book The Post Office of the United States written by Pao Hsun Chu and published by . This book was released on 1932 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The History of the British Post Office written by Joseph Clarence Hemmeon and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The American Postal Service History of the Postal Service from the Earliest Times written by Louis Melius and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Report of the Librarian of the State Library of Massachusetts written by State Library of Massachusetts and published by . This book was released on 1903 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: