| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Red, White, and Blue Letter Days: An American Calendar. By Matthew Dennis. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002. xiv, 338 pp. $35.00, ISBN 0-8014-3647-8.)

From more localized studies such as Lon Kurashige's Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival in Los Angeles, 1934–1990 (2002) to more general works such as Ellen Litwicki's America's Public Holidays, 1865–1920 (2000), historians have been catching up to anthropologists in their concern with the cultural, social, political, and historical role of celebrations. Matthew Dennis's recent contribution, Red, White, and Blue Letter Days, offers less an innovative theoretical argument about the invention of American identity than a sweeping canvas of federal holidays from their origins to the late twentieth century. So while he may not influence the direction of new scholarship in the field, Dennis reminds us of the fascinating, complicated, and often twisted histories of our most cherished national holidays. With elegance and humor, he has written a very accessible narrative that should be of interest to general readers and teachers as well as to those of us who continue to write and think about celebrations in American life.

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