Book Review

To Die For takes up the subject of how the celebratory paraphernalia of patriotism—the Fourth of July holiday, the national anthem, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the observance of Memorial Day—came into being between the end of the Civil War and the Yanks' triumphant return from World War I. It seems surprising, at first glance, that these were not bedrock features of American national life, almost as eternal as the Great Plains or the stern visages of the Founding Fathers engraved on our money. But they were not. Cecilia Elizabeth O'Leary asserts, on the contrary, that each of these familiar signs of loyalty and devotion to country was a source of vigorous cultural and political conflict, in which the familiar triad of race, class, and gender figured prominently, along with a kind of last-gasp sectionalism rapidly dissipated by the rise of nationwide markets.

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