It was a quiet Saturday afternoon, and I was stretched out on the couch, reading NEITHER SNOW NOR RAIN. My wife asked me if I was going to write a review, and I said that I would. She then asked me if I’d been assigned to read it, because why would I choose to read a history of the post office? I explained that I wanted to read it, and she shook her head.

The United States Postal Service is, I suppose, an odd thing to be reading about, and probably an odder thing to be writing about. It is an institution that we all intersect with at least six days a week. But the interaction is not always that positive, or at least it seems that way. There certainly isn’t much positive on days when half the mail is bills to pay, and the other half is junk that goes straight to the recycling bin. Certainly most of us have stood in long lines in dispiriting post offices, or dealt with rude and dismissive clerks. But at the same time, for the cost of a stamp, the USPS, without any sort of fuss, will deliver a card or a letter to anyone you like, anywhere in the country.

"...a lively, engaging narrative history... Leonard combines snappy prose and a deft personal touch to keep the story moving and the reader engaged."

That this is so is the result of a number of different historical vectors, all of which Devin Leonard retells in a lively, engaging narrative history. Leonard makes the wise decision to focus on both the personalities of the people who put their (ahem) stamp on the post office and the advances in technology and society that have resulted in changes to postal operations. The characters --- including the indispensable Benjamin Franklin, the indefatigable but misguided Anthony Comstock, and the glad-handing James Farley --- are a huge part of the story, and their influence on the Postal Service has been considerable. But it is the way that the Postal Service has adapted (or has failed to adapt) to change and reform that moves the story forward.

The Postal Service started out as a modest enterprise, with mail traveling by horseback up and down the dirt roads of the eastern seaboard. As the nation’s transportation network expanded, so did the mail service. When the railroads started extending across the country, the Postal Service began using rail cars to sort the mail in transit. And when the Wright Brothers showed the world that powered flight was possible, the Postal Service started to experiment with airmail.

Although the Postal Service was largely able to adapt to different ways of moving the mail around, it has had difficulties adapting in other ways. Leonard details the decades-long fight to get the mail delivered to rural households. The now-ubiquitous ZIP codes were very difficult to implement. Changing the Postal Service from a patronage machine to a professional (and unionized) workforce was particularly different.

Leonard combines snappy prose and a deft personal touch to keep the story moving and the reader engaged. NEITHER SNOW NOR RAIN is, perhaps, not everyone’s first choice, even for fans of narrative history. But if you have the time and inclination, and a lazy Saturday afternoon ahead of you, I certainly encourage you to pick it up and give it a good read, and then go out to the mailbox and think about what you’ve read as you pick up your mail. Hopefully it’s not full of bills this time.

Audiobook available, read by L. J. Ganser