The nationalization of the postal service in Italy transformed post-unification letter writing as a cultural medium. Both a harbinger of progress and an expanded, more efficient means of circulating information, the national postal service served as a bridge between the private world of personal communication and the public arena of information exchange and production of public opinion. As a growing number of people read and wrote letters, they became part of a larger community that regarded the letter not only as an important channel in the process of information exchange, but also as a necessary instrument in the education and modernization of the nation. In Postal Culture, Gabriella Romani examines the role of the letter in Italian literature, cultural production, communication, and politics. She argues that the reading and writing of letters, along with epistolary fiction, epistolary manuals, and correspondence published in newspapers, fostered a sense of community and national identity and thus became a force for social change.
During the early modern period the public postal systems became central pillars of the emerging public sphere. Despite the importance of the post in the transformation of communication, commerce and...
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 ...
Like it or not, Postal is the franchise that won't die—no matter how many molotov cocktails you throw at it.
“’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 ...
By 1840, the epistolary novel was dead.
Brennan focused instead on a union-backed plan to eliminate the USPS's crushing prefunding burden by moving retirees into Medicare. The USPS and its employees had been paying into the system since 1983, and the vast majority of retirees ...
Why so many mental breakdowns in the USPS? What kind of culture fostered frustration and anger? Lewis's look at "going postal" is an examination of the USPS and American culture.
Treasury, Postal Service, and General Government Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1995: U.S. Postal Service operations
Linda Benbow examines the organizational culture and various levels of diversity found in an urban United States Postal Service mail processing facility.
Each epistolary moment shares conflicting movements , antagonistic roles , and transmits this ten- sion to the narrative positions it stimulates . This subnarrative strand parallels the thematic countergestures of end and beginning ...