Revealing Lincoln’s Postcard History
Historians Ed Zimmer (left) and Jim McKee stand before the massive cast metal dedicatory tablet in the lobby of Lincoln’s historic Terminal Building, located at the southwest corner of 10th and O Streets. (January 2021 photo by Justin Wan, Lincoln Journal Star)
Historians Jim McKee and Ed Zimmer, both highly respected experts on the history of Lincoln, have each dipped into their vast collections of Lincoln postcards to assemble a jointly-authored book of 211 scanned postcard images and accompanying explanatory narratives. The selected postcards, all considered rare today, date from the early 1900s through the 1930s.
The book, titled “Lincoln” and added to the Postcard History Series of Arcadia Publishing (Mount Pleasant, South Carolina), is being released on March 28, 2022, and will be available at Lincoln book sellers and likely online. The story of how this Lincoln postcard book was conceived and put together is told by Lincoln Journal Star reporter Peter Salter in a front-page feature on March 13, 2022 (see link in the sidebar).
Jim and Ed are generously donating all royalties from the book sales to the Preservation Association of Lincoln, a gesture for which the PAL Board of Directors is most grateful.
The longtime collaborative and mutually supportive connection between Ed Zimmer and Jim McKee is widely known across Lincoln and is described in a January 2021 feature story by Jodi Fuson in L Magazine, published periodically by the Lincoln Journal Star (see link in the sidebar). The postcard book, which once again combines the expertise of Jim and Ed, is a fascinating and valuable contribution to the documentation of Lincoln’s history.
Over the years, both Ed and Jim have presented numerous informative PAL Brown Bag Lectures to audiences at the Nebraska History Museum auditorium. The Brown Bag Lectures have been recorded and are available to everyone on YouTube for viewing at no cost by searching under “Preservation Association of Lincoln” on https://www.YouTube.com.