Very little postcard art reproduced in the book, and very little information about postcard art or the postcard industry or the various technologies used to manufacture postcards. The bulk of the book is boilerplate text on the history of Illinois, but the authors' tortured attempts at including a race/class/gender dimension do produce some bizarre assertions, made with much solemnity, about the failure of postcard producers to print postcards depicting slums, labor conflict, or women being oppressed. Bizarre because, I don't think I ever met a person under the misapprehension that postcard producers did print such images on postcards, or ever would have.

The authors make frequent, completely unsubstantiated claims about how consumers of postcard art responded to that art. For example: "Buyers [of postcards] wanted reassurance. They wanted to feel, if only through the card's purchase, that they fit comfortably into the pictured scenes: that they indeed shared in America's successes." How the authors divined this information remains a mystery, as they provide zero evidence to support such bold and sweeping generalizations.

The book is beautifully designed by Kelly Gray and Jim Proefrock. I particularly admired the shade of green used on the end papers. ( )