Although postcards are usually associated with cheeky seaside tableaus and banal holiday pleasantries, they are made possible by sophisticated industries and institutions, from printers to postal services. When they were invented postcards established what is now taken for granted in modern times: the ability to send and receive messages around the world easily and inexpensively. Fundamentally they are about creating personal connections - connections between people, places and beliefs.

This book examines postcards on a global scale, to understand them as artifacts that are at the intersection of history, science, technology, art and culture. It shows how postcards were the first global social network and also, here in the twenty-first century, how postcards are not yet extinct.