This was an odd and interesting way to get a book. Amazon.com recently began offering "locker delivery" in New York for some of the products it sells. Instead of having items delivered to your home or office you might instead want to pick it up at your leisure at one of Amazon's 8 Manhattan locker locations. I thought this sounded hilarious, and just for the heck of it I gave it a try. I quickly encountered this service's obvious limitations: These lockers exist only for delivery of products sold by Amazon.com. This might not seem like such a problem at first, since Amazon.com appears to sell every freakin' thing on earth. But this restriction is more limiting than it sounds. Locker space is limited, making a significant part of Amazon's catalogue unavailable for this type of delivery. Additionally, only items that are sold by Amazon are eligible, eliminating everything in the Amazon Marketplace as an option. The first few items I tried to order were not available for locker delivery, and no specific reason was given as to why each of these items was not allowed. I assume the problem was with the size of the items, though they did not seem especially oversized to me. I guess that Amazon's "frustration free packaging" bulks these items up, making the shipment too large to fit into any of these particular lockers. Or maybe the shipped item actually was an acceptable size but the larger lockers were already filled. I originally intended to pick this up on a Monday, but I couldn't make it that day. Amazon sent me a friendly reminder that my item had been shipped, and to pick it up soon, or it would be returned. I didn't really appreciate that, as I thought this service was all about picking things up at my leisure, but I guess it makes sense that Amazon would want to move products through these lockers as expeditiously as possible. I am pretty certain I will never use this service again. Amazon must know what they are doing by offering locker delivery, but I find it hard to imagine that throngs of people will gravitate toward it. If you have an itinerant lifestyle or livelihood then you might find this valuable. Or maybe if you were homeless or otherwise without a postal mailing address -- but then you'd be unlikely to buy much stuff online under those circumstances. I will stick with my P.O. box in midtown. It allows me to receive products from Amazon.com, and from virtually any other retailer, online or off.