A distinctly American institution, the United States Postal Service has an army of 300,000 letter carriers delivering 513 million pieces of mail per day—40 percent of the world's volume. Despite its efficiency, the USPS is slowly vanishing; critics say it is slow and archaic, mail volume is down, and the workforce is shrinking. But why? Tackling the fascinating, centuries-long history of the service, Devin Leonard traces its progress from USPS founder Ben Franklin's days through the crippling post office labor strikes of the 1970s, through its contemporary battle against a host of competitors. It is not surprisingly a tale with intriguing characters, notably fanatical censor Anthony Comstock, stamp collector Franklin Roosevelt, and an ingenious Mississippi widow working in the Dead Letter Office.