In the decades around 1900, postcards were Twitter, email, Flickr and Facebook, all wrapped into one. A postcard craze swept the world, and billions of cards were bought, mailed and pasted into albums.

Many famous artists turned to the new medium, but one of the great pleasures and enigmas of postcards is how some of the most beautiful and interesting examples were made by artists whose names we barely know.

Drawing on the riches of the Leonard A. Lauder Postcard Collection (probably the finest and most comprehensive collection of its type), this gorgeous book traces the historical and cultural themes--enthralling, exciting, and sometimes disturbing--of the modern age. The first general publication on the postcard as an artistic medium since the mid-1970s,

The Postcard Age is organized thematically, with chapters devoted to urban life, the changing role of women, sports, celebrity, new technologies, the stylish collectors' cards of Art Nouveau and World War I. The result is at once a vivid picture of the concerns and pastimes of the turn of the century and a sampler from the Lauder's vast archives.