The Coffee-Table Book in the Post-War Anglophone World argues that coffee-table books appeared and became popular in the post-war era at the convergence of three important developments: advances in full colour printing technology, social change, and publishing entrepreneurism and innovation. Examining the coffee-table book through a book history lens acknowledges their significant contribution to post-war visual culture and illustrated publishing. Focussing on post-war America, Great Britain, and Australia during the “golden age” era of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, this history of the coffee-table book takes an interdisciplinary approach to put the coffee-table book in context in regards to materiality, format, printing, status, and genre.

Considers (82) S. 1046, (82) S. 1335, (82) S. 1369.

A great deal has been written about the General Post Office in newspapers and magazines, but the books on the subject are comparatively few. And these volumes are either exhaustive historical treatises, or more popularly written descriptions of Post Office life and work. However, these works carry us no farther than the eve of penny postage, while the other books were written too long ago to be a guide to the Post Office of today. It is within the last twenty years that the Department has made the most rapid strides in the extension of its activities. Thus, what the author is attempting to do is to tell the story of the Department, briefly in its early beginnings, more fully in its modern developments, and in such a way as to give the reader the impression that the Post Office is alive, that it is in close touch with the needs of the nation, and is in less danger of being strangled with red-tape methods than at any time of its existence.