In a sense I backed into writing books via a postcard collection. After years of collecting postcards of restaurants and tea rooms, I wanted to learn more about them and began sending around a proposal for a book on tea rooms. I love doing research and visiting libraries and archives. When I published Tea at the Blue Lantern Inn: A Social History of the Tea Room Craze in America in 2002 it had not yet become possible to do historical research online like it is now so I had to really search for anything about old tea rooms from the teens and 1920s. My next book, on the social history of department stores (Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class) had a chapter on tea rooms in it too. Both books were illustrated with postcards and menus that I had collected.
My most recent books is The World of Department Stores (2011) and is beautifully illustrated and designed. In this case, though, the picture editors were in Paris!
The book "that got away" may be the one I'd love to do now, on the social history of American restaurants. Alas, I don't think there's a place for it under the new realities of publishing! So in the meantime I am consoling myself with my blog "Restaurant-ing through history." I have to say that I love handling the editorial, illustrating, and writing roles all at once, as well as hearing from people from all over the world.