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Sterling Lord

Sterling Lord has been a literary agent for more than 60 years.

Ken Kesey's bus

When Kerouac Met Kesey

The two counterculture heroes, one representing the Beat ’50s and one the psychedelic ’60s, had a lot less in common than you might expect

by Sterling Lord | Thursday, August 25, 2011
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THIS WEEK’S ARCHIVE PICK

2nd Look

What Does Columbus Day Really Mean?

by William J. Connell

Whether you celebrate Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Discoverers’ Day, or Native Americans’ Day, historian William J. Connell observes that, in the end, this controversial civic holiday is just that: a holiday. In his essay “What Columbus Day Really Means,” Connell writes that President Benjamin Harrison created the holiday in 1892 to honor both Native Americans and the many immigrants who were only then arriving in the country. “It was to be a national holiday that was not about the Founding Fathers or the Civil War, but about the rest of American history,” Connell writes—a day for celebrating the country and all its people. Sounds to us like a pretty good reason to take the day off of work.