The Postal Age: The Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth-Century America

Award-winning postal historian David Henkin will be the featured speaker at a public lecture and book signing today from 12 noon to 1:30 p.m. at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C.

Henkin, a University of California, Berkeley professor of history, is one of two winners of the first Rita Lloyd Moroney Award, created by the Postal Service to recognize excellence in scholarship on the history of the U.S. postal system and to raise awareness about the significance of that system in American life.

Henkin's book, The Postal Age: The Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth-Century America, merited the Senior Prize ($2,000) for work published by faculty members, independent scholars, public historians and other non-degree candidates.

According to a review of the book on Amazon.com, "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. "