Sounds like a good book. I've often looked for similar books about other countries, but never found any that came even close to a "fair picture" -- and modern stamps seem to have taken another route than stamping the history.
Most of the older stamps were engraved, and some countries, particularly those with a very moderate issuing policy still have most -- of not all -- their stamps done that way. Off the hat I can mention Greenland.
Engraved stamps for sure is an art in itself, and there were, and still are, great engravers around. One of them is Czeslaw
Slania (Sweden) who incidentally turns 82 today, and who has done a number of stamps also for the US. You can see them all online on this webpage:
http://slaniastamps.school.dk/frame_UnitedStates.htm
Other young engravers that are about to take over from
Slania, are Martin Morck and Lars Sjoblom, both from
Sweden. Martin Morck is becoming quite famous these days, and has done a lot of engravings of various types for a number of countries, while Sjoblom is particularly famed for his exquisite engravings of animals on stamps.
So far he has mostly done stamps for his native Sweden;
his first stamps for Denmark (where I come from) were released earlier this year.
Engraved stamps are about to become a topic in itself, and is -- in my eyes -- well worth collecting, simply for the sake of their beauty. And they cover, so to say, nearly any known topic you can think about; flora/fauna, art, sports, transportation, you name it.
