Liz Durkee
Circle of Faith, The Story of the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting, By Sally Dagnall, Vineyard Stories, Edgartown, Ma. 2010 $24.95.
T here is no other place quite like Oak Bluffs — the color and charm, the hustle and bustle, the beaches and parks and fireworks and festivals, open and free and inviting. And to think it all started as a religious retreat.
THE LIFE I LED: The Editor of America’s Most Beloved Magazine Tells His Inside, Intimate Story. By Ralph Graves. Tiasquam Press, New York, N.Y. 2010. 216 pages. $12.50.
Beginning back before televi sion, before news and images came to us instantaneously as they do now, literally in the palm of our hand and from thousands of sources, the world was brought to us by LIFE magazine.
THE 1858 MAP OF CAPE COD, MARTHA’S VINEYARD AND NANTUCKET. By Henry F. Walling, with contributions from Robert Finch, Theresa Mitchell Barbo, Elliott Carr, Jim Coogan, Charles Fields, Gail Fields, Adam Gamble, Joseph Garver, Kathleen Schatzberg. On Cape Publications Inc., 2009. 122 pages. $50, hardcover.
THAT OLD CAPE MAGIC. By Richard Russo. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. 261 pages. $25.95.
O ne afternoon two friends happened to drop by my house. The first arrived in a little sports convertible. When the second showed up in his VW bus he walked inside and said, “It looks like a middle-aged meltdown out there.”
LETHAL LEGACY. By Linda Fairstein. Doubleday. February, 2009. 367 pages. $26.
T he magnificent New York Public Library (NYPL) is the number one character in Linda Fairstein’s new Alexandra Cooper novel, Lethal Legacy.
The town of Oak Bluffs is proud to be “StormSmart.”
Or rather, the town is on its way to gaining said smartness. Being StormSmart has to do with one of those scary, invisible truths that no one wants to think about: sea level rise. And the debate is over. No matter how well the human race conserves energy from here on in, the sea around us will rise. Conservative estimates show the sea rising at least three feet over the course of this century, not including the impact of the planet’s rapidly melting glaciers.