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For a century Americans have been purchasing picture postcards. Ohio in Historic Postcards presents 208 examples of postcards from early twentieth-century Ohio and places them in their historical context. At the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, the first picture postcards portrayed a range of the fair's attractions. From that beginning postcards took the nation by storm. The efficiency of the Railway Mail Service together with the sparsity of telephones made the cards a cheap, reliable, and convenient form of communication. The Golden Age of the picture postcard coincided in Ohio with economic growth and t he making of the modern state. Ohio ranked fourth in population and fifth in manufacturing, and people were optimistic about the future.