Books & Ideas
The meeting room of the Chilmark Public Library was filled to capacity Wednesday night, with guests spilling over into the adjacent children’s area and front hallway of the building, as Vineyarders gathered to hear readings from Paris Press’s latest collection, Sisters: An Anthology.
By IVY ASHE
The meeting room of the Chilmark Public Library was filled to capacity Wednesday night, with guests spilling over into the adjacent children’s area and front hallway of the building, as Vineyarders gathered to hear readings from Paris Press’s latest collection, Sisters: An Anthology.
Emperor of Ocean Park author, Yale law professor and seasonal Islander Stephen L. Carter will discuss Why Democracy Needs Books, the subject of his next book, on Sunday, July 18 at 2 p.m. at the Vineyard Haven Public Library.
The event, with a reception following, is presented by the Friends of the Vineyard Haven Public Library.
With tears in his eyes, an emotional Fred B. (Ted) Morgan Jr. stood at a podium to thank his number one supporter through the past 65 years of his life. The hundreds of people gathered to honor Mr. Morgan with a 2010 lifetime achievement award from the Edgartown Library Foundation sat silently as the guest of honor graciously acknowledged his wife, Floss, for seeing him through thick and thin for the better part of a century.
The United States will likely remain stuck in the war in Afghanistan well past President Obama’s nominated date next year for beginning to pull troops out, one of the architects of the President’s Afghan policy says.
In an address on the Vineyard on Thursday night, Bruce Riedel, the former CIA officer and current senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who chaired last year’s review of policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, gave a generally pessimistic assessment of the state of the Afghan war.
Law professor Ray Madoff will discuss her new book, Immortality and the Law: The Rising Power of the American Dead, on Thursday, July 15, 8 p.m. at the Chilmark Community Center. Described by the Financial Times as a “stunning polemic,” Ms. Madoff examines the distinctly American approach taken to the law of the dead; when it comes to property in America, the dead have greater control than anywhere else in the world.
Sisters Celebration
Bring your sister (if you’re speaking), your daughters, nieces, cousins, friends, sister in law, and neighbors to A Sisters Celebration on Wednesday, July 14, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Chilmark Library, featuring readings by Carol Gilligan, Jessica Harris, Rose Styron and Jan Freeman, director of Paris Press and co-editor of Sisters: An Anthology (Paris Press, 2009)
Writers included are Margaret Atwood, Dorothy Parker, Joan Baez, Barbara Kingsolver, Wendy Wasserstein and Alice Walker.