The mass protests that greeted attempts to open the 1893 Chicago World's Fair on a Sunday seem almost comical today in an era of seven-day convenience and twenty-four-hour shopping. But the issue of the meaning of Sunday is one that has historically given rise to a wide range of strong emotions and pitted a surprising variety of social, religious, and class interests against one another. Whether observed as a day for rest, or time-and-a-half, Sunday has always been a day apart in the American week.Supplementing wide-ranging historical research with the reflections and experiences of ordinary individuals, Alexis McCrossen traces conflicts over the meaning of Sunday that have shaped the day in the United States since 1800. She investigates cultural phenomena such as blue laws and the Sunday newspaper, alongside representations of Sunday in the popular arts. Holy Day, Holiday attends to the history of religion, as well as the histories of labor, leisure, and domesticity.

Sunday observance in the Christian West was an important religious issue from late Antiquity until at least the early twentieth century. In England the subject was debated in Parliament for six centuries. During the reign of Charles I disagreements about Sunday observance were a factor in the Puritan flight from England. In America the Sunday question loomed large in the nation’s newspapers. In the nineteenth century, it was the lengthiest of our national debates—outlasting those of temperance and slavery. In a more secular age, many writers have been haunted by the afterlife of Sunday. Wallace Stevens speaks of the “peculiar life of Sundays.” For Kris Kristofferson “there’s something in a Sunday, / Makes a body feel alone.” From Augustine to Caesarius, through the Reformation and the Puritan flight from England, down through the ages to contemporary debates about Sunday worship, Stephen Miller explores the fascinating history of the Sabbath. He pays particular attention to the Sunday lives of a number of prominent British and American writers—and what they have had to say about Sunday. Miller examines such observant Christians as George Herbert, Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, Hannah More, and Jonathan Edwards. He also looks at the Sunday lives of non-practicing Christians, including Oliver Goldsmith, Joshua Reynolds, John Ruskin, and Robert Lowell, as well as a group of lapsed Christians, among them Edmund Gosse, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, and Wallace Stevens. Finally, he examines Walt Whitman’s complex relationship to Christianity. The result is a compelling study of the changing role of religion in Western culture.

The revised and expanded edition of Touching Base examines the myths, realities, symbols, and rituals of America's national pastime. Steven Riess details the relationships among urban politics, communities, and baseball while exploring how Progressive Era sensibilities shaped debates over issues like Sunday games, ballpark construction, and promotion of the games. Focusing on Atlanta, New York, and Chicago, Riess looks at all the participants--from spectators to owners to players--in analyzing how baseball both influenced and mirrored broader society.