Table of Contents

HISTORY OF THE POSTAL SERVICE; Post Offices Across a Young Nation; Postal Service Expands with the Nation; The Post Office and the Press; A Growing Need for Postal Facilities; The Expanding System; Postal Service in the Civil War Years; New Delivery Service; Political Patronage and Post Offices; Uncle Jerry's Legacy; Why Some Post Offices Perished; Post Office Names; Common Architecture and the Supervising Architects; Types of Post Offices; Major Building Sprees; How Services Affected Design; The Original Shop-at-Home Club; Best of Times, Worst of Times; Reinventing Government: Transforming America's Postal System; REGIONAL GUIDE TO AMERICAN POST OFFICES; New England; Mid-Atlantic; South; Midwest; West; Information Sources; Further Reading; Illustration Credits; Index.

About the Author

JAMES H. BRUNS is founding Director of the National Postal Museum at the Smithsonian Institution. He has curated the Smithsonian's National Philatelic Collection since 1984, and is a director of the Postal History Foundation. He is the author of Mail on the Move and Horse-Drawn Mail.