Postcards

Considering the ephemeral nature of her subject, it's fitting that Ms. Pyne roams far off the path of the strictly historical account. She digs deep into the past, and in peculiar corners of the present, seeking curious details . . . the search turns up its share of delights . . . At its best, Ms. Pyne's book asks questions big enough and searching enough to reframe the way you think about more than just postcards. * Wall Street Journal *
Pyne takes readers on a global journey through revolutions, social movements, scientific and technological discoveries, and sentimental personal connections . . . Postcards is a marvelous, in-depth analysis and thought-generating look into how a version of almost everything you see on your current digital social media networks was first produced, composed, and mailed as a postcard. * Naples Lifestyle magazine *
Lydia Pyne examines postcards on a global scale, to understand them as artifacts that are at the intersection of history, science, technology, art, and culture. In doing so, she shows how postcards were the first global social network and also, here in the twenty-first century, how postcards are not yet extinct. * New Books Network *
Historian Pyne has now turned her attention to the production and collection of these postal remainders in Postcards . . . Produced inexpensively, their messages quickly jotted, and mailed for a penny, postcards’ disposability seemed intended from the start. But at the same time, as Pyne expends most of her effort to show, they reinforced national and regional identities, celebrated civic life, portrayed the exotic and bizarre, and expressed the rising urge to travel ("wish you were here"). * On the Seawall *
Lydia Pyne’s Postcards expertly tells the story of how this small piece of mail went from saving the U.S. Post Office to being the foundations of our image-based social media platforms. This must-read book is a deeply researched chronicle of how we keep in touch, simultaneously invoking a rich sense of nostalgia while giving readers a meaningful framework for our contemporary moment. * Jason Farman *
Fast-paced and delightful, Postcards is chock-full of both heart and information, the whole history of this beloved medium perfectly sorted and explained. Pyne’s wide-ranging research yields a fascinating set of insights on how we represent ourselves in space and time and how we remain close to our loved ones even when we’re far away. A wonderful and highly rewarding read. * Jennifer Croft, author of Homesick (2019) and translator of Flights (2018) *
In this beautifully illustrated, breezily articulated book, Lydia Pyne introduces us to an analog antecedent to today’s tweets, texts, and memes: the postcard. Condensed within this compact carrier of pithy messages, Pyne demonstrates, are histories of the postal service, printing technologies, and portraiture of the quotidian – as well as humanity's enduring desire for palpable connection. * Shannon Mattern, Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research, and author of Clay, Data and Dirt: Five Thousand Years of Urban Media (2017) *
More than a quaint history, Postcards offers a personal and investigative homage to a lost art. Pyne makes a persuasive case for viewing postcards as a special kind of technology – one that has been used for revolutionary, propagandistic, and sentimental ends alike. The book brims with historical images which, alongside Pyne’s lovingly detailed explanations, show how that technology has changed over time, making Postcards as intelligent as it is tender. * – Sheila Liming, Associate Professor, Champlain College and author of What a Library Means to a Woman (2020) *