McCrossen's fine new book gives us a solidly synthetic history of the American Sunday.... Her work is made all the more rewarding by her use of a valuable breadth of primary material, ranging from sheet music to diary entires to Currier and Ives illustrations to bicycle periodicals such as Bicycle World and The Wheel.... McCrossen offers an engaging treatment of changing notions of American rest, leisure, and religious devotion.
- Paul Gutjahr (Journal of American History) This book by Alexis McCrossen is a complicated, ambitious study of Sunday as a symbol and an institution.... The book is engagingly written and fun to read. Most readers will find threads of their own history in this melange of 'acceptable' Sunday activities. Quite likely, the threads will include both holy day and holiday.
- Janet Forsythe Fishburn (American Historical Review) This compact, elegant, and thoroughly researched volume is the first full-scale cultural history of Sunday observance in the United States. Holy Day, Holiday conveys a vivid sense of the diversity of meanings attached to Sunday throughout American history.... The book's strength lies in the richness of its narrative.
- Michael J. McClymond (Journal of the Early Republic) Alexis McCrossen offers the most accessible account available of Sunday's transformation in America from a day of rest to a day of leisure.
- Douglas A. Sweeney (Religious Studies Review) Ms. McCrossen's fascinating cultural history of Sunday in America mainly covers the 19th-century struggle between conservative Sabbatarians who wanted to keep Sunday as the Lord's day— as a day of Christian worship— and liberal Protestants who wanted to turn it into a day of cultural uplift.
- Adam Wolfson (Wall Street Journal) Whether it is a day for rest, worship, family time or work overtime, Sunday has distinguished itself on the American calendar. McCrossen considers blue laws and the Sunday paper, and much more in this evocation of 200 years of highly emotional social, religious and class disputes over the meaning of the day.
(Publishers Weekly)
