Quotes from Chris West

I owe my life to my hobbies—especially stamp collecting

The Iwo Jima stamp shows us the many-sided truth of war: its teamwork and courage, its moments of glory, but behind that, its amoral destructiveness and its long, painful after-effects—something General William Tecumseh Sherman understood so well.

The $1 Airlift, another of Stevan Dohanos's designs, was specially issued in April 1968 for families sending parcels to U.S. servicemen in Vietnam, a conflict that by that time had become hopelessly out of control and was dividing the nation as profoundly as the issue of race.

ON FEBRUARY 18, 1861, the man featured on this stamp stood on the steps of the statehouse in Montgomery, Alabama, and took the oath of office as president of the Confederate States of America. Less than two months later he was at war with his own former countrymen. The war was to be one of horrific brutality, with a death toll fifteen times greater than that of all America's previous conflicts, including the War of Independence, added together.

though the depiction of him on the stamp is not exactly flattering. A number of Washington portraits share this quality. Energetic and impatient, especially when young, he hated sitting around posing to be painted, and it usually shows. He also had bad teeth, some of which had been replaced with ivory replicas, which explains the puffiness around his mouth.