Post Masters: Arkansas Post Office Art in the New Deal. By John Purifoy Gill, with photographs by Willie Allen. (Jonesboro: Arkansas State University Foundation, 2002. Pp. 105. Foreword, illustrations. $49.95.) During the Great Depression, the Treasury Department created the most comprehensive program of public this country has ever undertaken. It placed some 1,100 paintings and 300 sculptures in federal buildings across America. Twenty-one murals were designed for Arkansas post offices between 1938 and 1942. John Purifoy Gill's Post Masters: Arkansas Post Office Art in the New Deal chronicles the commission and creation of the Arkansas murals, relying almost exclusively on primary source materials-approximately 1,200 letters, memoranda, clippings, press releases, and photographs housed in the National Archives at College Park, Maryland. For the first time, all of these murals have been reproduced in color (with the exception of the Clarendon and Osceola murals, which are lost), making this book welcome addition the fields of American cultural history and Arkansas studies. Gill concisely recounts the history of the post office mural program. Begun in 1934 as the section of Painting and Sculpture (later the section of Fine Arts), it sought lift the spirits of America during time of national crisis by broadcasting messages of hope the common man (p. 11). Artists were chosen through anonymous regional and national competitions, and the winners were required consult with the postmaster and local citizens on the choice of subject matter, which usually related occupations or activities of the particular community. Gill correctly emphasizes that the section was the first government-sponsored program to require public participation by local residents in the selection of public art (p. 11). Also revolutionary was the mechanism used for funding the murals. The section actually set the precedent for most current public funding, known as percent-for-art. This method required that one percent of the construction budget for each new post office be set aside for public art. Artist's payments (which were made in three installments) ranged from $470 $760, a generous sum considering that Arkansas was still in the Depression during most of the period (p. 12). The book goes on tell the individual stories of the twenty-one post office murals, arranged alphabetically by town. Gill includes useful inventory (which acts as his table of contents) of the present address for each mural, making this book useful resource for firsthand viewing. …