Holy Day, Holiday: The American Sunday

Holy Day, Holiday: The American Sunday. By Alexis McCrossen. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000. 240 pp. Cloth, $39.95. ISBN 0-801-43417-3.

Reviewed by Richard Butsch

This is a broad history of debates about Sunday and the Sabbath in the United States since 1800, but primarily from about 1850 to 1930, during the transition from agrarian to modern industrial America. Alexis McCrossen examines the construction of Sunday through a wide variety of discourses on the activities for which Sunday became known. These include such diverse subjects as libraries and museums, expositions, railroads, public parks, bicycling and automobile excursions, commercial entertainment …