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. Tackling the fascinating 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 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.