Two more inches of snow politely held off until after the February meeting of the Mount Nittany Philatelic Society at the American Philatelic Research Library in Bellefonte, Pa., postponed from the prior week when sub-zero wind chill brought central Pennsylvania to a standstill. The APRL is where the club usually holds monthly meetings, but was an especially appropriate venue for the late February get-together of a dozen hardy souls, because the subject was philatelic literature.
MNPS members were asked, “What stamp-related books have you found indispensable, and why? Which publications would you recommend to others in the stamp hobby?”
One of the first recommendations by a MNPS member was Robert B. Morgan’s Hungarian Hyperinflation of 1945-1946: the Postage Rates and Postal History of History’s Most Impressive Inflation, published in 2003 by the Collectors’ Club of Chicago. Hungary’s postwar economic collapse, reflected in mail rates and stamps, was literally unimaginable. At its peak, which came about in July 1946, inflation was 41,900,000,000,000,000,000,000,000%. That’s 41.9 quadrillion percent, as Europe calculates it.
Another club member had words of praise for Passing in Review, LTC. Herman L. Halle’s account of the political chaos that engulfed post-WWII Germany, largely told with original documents from that turbulent era. Continue reading “What's Your Favorite Philatelic Literature?”