African American Soldiers and the Long Civil Rights Movement

maps and charts illustrating how postal geography changed over time are central to Blevins’s argumentation. He effectively employs a wide array of engaging charts, ranging from traditional bar graphs depicting postmasters’ removal to proportional area charts illustrating the flow of money orders, to communicate key concepts. One of the book’s considerable merits is its attention to less commonly studied topics in the scholarly discourse, such as histories of decentralized government actors and ubiquitous social forces. Paper Trails is a must-read for postal historians and will intrigue both history professors and graduate students interested in communications, the state, and the Gilded Age and Progressive Era American West.